Israeli police arrest 240 Palestinian workers in Israel

The Israeli police forces arrested 240 Palestinian workers, allegedly for not having work permits or the proper documents to stay in Israel, Tuesday at dawn.

Israeli media sources reported that the Israeli police stormed scores of construction sites and arrested more than 240 Palestinian workers from several parts of the West Bank who work there.

The police clamed that those workers do not have the legal documents to work or stay in Israeli, also 8 Israeli employers were arrested in the campaign for hiring Palestinians and driving them in and out of Israel. Police source reported.

With those dawn invasion arrests the total of the workers arrested in the past 24 hours rise to 760 workers.

Such raids of workplaces have become commonplace in Israel, despite the fact that the raids are illegal. Hundreds of workers are swept up in the arrest raids, and then Israeli police sort through the arrestees to see who has the correct documentation, and who does not.

To be able to get working documents, a Palestinian worker seeking work in Israel must be married and older than 29, with no security record — extremely difficult, considering that virtually every Palestinian male living in Palestine has been arrested by Israeli forces at least once by the time he is 29.

Even if workers to manage to get the proper permission, there is no guarantee that they will be allowed to cross to Israel — often workers are turned back at one of several checkpoints due to the whim of the Israeli soldiers on duty at the time.

Most recently, the Israeli Immigration Department has been importing workers from Thailand and providing them with temporary residency status, in order to prevent Palestinian workers from maintaining jobs they previously held in Israel.