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Palestinian Employees Hurt by BDS Speak Up About Its Negative Effects

June 22, 2018
Palestinian Employees Hurt by BDS Speak Up About Its Negative Effects
Written by ROCKY BAIER

The PA also gets money from taxes. Palestinian workers in an Israeli industrial zone must pay 1,000 NIS a month to the PA, according to Basherat.

Palestinian society? That was the question discussed by Palestinians and Israelis who gathered for a roundtable discussion on Monday, to talk about building “bottom-up peace” through economic cooperation in Area C of the West Bank.

The forum at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs was centered around its new book, Defeating Denormalization: Shared Palestinian and Israeli Perspectives on a New Path to Peace.

In the book, nine of the book’s contributors share their opinions and stories.

For Nabil Basherat, a factory manager for the Israeli company SodaStream, the BDS movement caused hundreds of factory workers to be laid off.

“The BDS movement has threatened my job security and livelihood,” Basherat wrote in his chapter of the book. “It damaged the livelihoods of hundreds of SodaStream factory workers, who were laid off as SodaStream left its Mishor Adumim facility in the West Bank.”

According to Basherat, the factory closed due to BDS protests in the US and Europe.

Workers then had to find new jobs or emigrate. Some workers chose to commute to a different SodaStream factory that was farther away, choosing it over working for Palestinian companies that were closer.

Nadia Aloush, a Palestinian employed for 13 years at the Israeli supermarket chain Rami Levi and another contributor to the book, lamented that BDS has done nothing for her.

“I am against the BDS,” Aloush said. “What are they doing for us? They have a lot of money for themselves… we have not seen one penny. All that money that they have, they spend it on themselves.”

In her chapter, Aloush wrote how people worldwide donate aid money to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

“I do not understand how the entire world can donate aid money to the PA when its bureaucrats refuse to create jobs for their own people,” she said.

The PA also gets money from taxes. Palestinian workers in an Israeli industrial zone must pay 1,000 NIS a month to the PA, according to Basherat.

Read More: Jerusalem Post

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