(Maan News-PA) Palestinians who worked in Jewish settlements in 2010 made almost double the wage of their peers in the public and service sectors, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in a new report released Wednesday. 14% of the Palestinian workforce are employed in West Bank settlements. Average daily wages for settlement workers were 150 shekels ($44) per day, compared to 76.9 ($22) in the West Bank and 46.2 ($13.50) in Gaza. "Palestinian workers in our factories are making closer to three times the wages they would be making in the PA," said settlement leader Yaakov David Ha'ivri. "I guess that is the reason that Salam Fayyad's threats to impose a workers boycott never materialized." "It would be very interesting to see the results of a true open and democratic referendum of the local Arab population" to learn if they would prefer a ban on settlements or to continue working in them, he added.
2011-04-21 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive