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BARKAN, West Bank – An Israeli-led plant in the West Bank is asking its Jewish reserve workers not to show up in uniform so that Palestinian workers do not feel occupied, an Israeli official said.
In the Barkan Industrial Park, one of the many commercial areas run by Israelis near Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank that Israel and its supporters have long erected into models of coexistence, the factory owners pay Israeli and Palestinian workers equally. They avoid any visible safety or weapons. And they organize barbecues in companies to try to control tensions.
But these efforts were hard hit last weekend when a 23-year-old Palestinian electrician, identified by Israeli authorities as Ashraf Naalwa, rushed to the second floor of the factory where he was working. Armed with a submachine gun, he tied up the hands of a secretary, Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, a mother of a 28-year-old child, before shooting her, authorities said.
He then killed Ziv Hagbi, an accountant and father of three, aged 35. He also wounded a 54-year-old employee, Sarah Vettori, before fleeing.
The other Barkan factories, located in the center of the West Bank, returned to normal a few days later, if they were disturbed by the fact that the suspect was on the run. But the attack highlighted what many people here have long been trying to ignore: these islands of cooperation are vulnerable friction points in a territory that Palestinians claim for a future state and that is part of it. of a Jewish settlement project considered a violation of international law. law.
The machines of the Alon group, where the attack took place, remained inactive all week. Death notices have been attached to the main entrance of the plant, which produces waste management systems.
"We are currently under a lot of pressure from different quarters," said Eran Bodankin, Logistics Manager. "They say it's best to immediately get back to work, prevent post-trauma and show the hostile forces that they did not beat us." But he added that the society was still focused on mourning and supporting the families of those killed. .
"We will come back when we feel that we are emotionally ready," he said, "and can give our workers the security they need to return home safely."
In the next room, a group of employees, including Palestinian officials, met with psychologists. Pausing in the courtyard, an Israeli said he worked with some of the Palestinians here for years but did not believe they were really sorry about what had happened, despite what they had said. Another stated that the goal was to try to return to the previous situation.
Ms. Vettori told reporters from her hospital bed how a Palestinian colleague, Basel, had rushed to her side, comforted her and prevented the blood from flowing from her. wound with a roll of paper until the emergency arrived.
"One murder and another save lives," she said.
Roads outside the Barkan bubble, where pairs of armed soldiers guard Israeli bus stops, are teeming with violence and danger. On Thursday, a Palestinian assailant stabbed and wounded a reserve soldier near a headquarters of the army brigade. On Saturday, Israeli police announced that she was investigating the death of a Palestinian woman who had been struck in the head by a stone thrown by settlers while she was driving with her husband in the region, according to Palestinian information.
But Israeli partisans often view Israeli-controlled West Bank industrial and commercial areas as proof that military control over the West Bank can benefit Palestinians. Jewish settler leaders invite international groups to visit Barkan.
In condemning this attack, Jason D. Greenblatt, President Trump's Special Representative for International Negotiations and Lead Negotiator for the Middle East, described Barkan as "a beacon of coexistence and a model for the future".
Industrial zones in the West Bank offer, among other things, cheaper rent to industrialists than in central Israel. And for the 3,300 Palestinians working in Barkan, the call is clear. They are treated equally in the workplace and earn the same wages and benefits as their Israeli counterparts under Israeli law.
The Israeli minimum wage – equivalent to about $ 1,500 a month – is nearly three times what unskilled workers can earn in areas of the West Bank under Palestinian control. Most Palestinians working in Barkan earn more in overtime, and some become leaders or posts.
A factory sends all its workers on a group holiday: Palestinian employees were recently selected in Amman or Istanbul, while a Jewish group will soon travel to Naples.
The Palestinian Authority disapproves of Palestinians working in the settlements but has not tried to stop them. However, it has banned Palestinians from selling colonization products, viewing industrial areas as a symbol of the normalization of occupation and its entrenchment.
"Someone occupies your country, steals your land, steals your water, steals your resources, then says," I'll do a good business for you if you come to work for me. " I will create jobs for you. We are not occupiers. We are employers, "said Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian official. "It's ridiculous – settlements are illegal in every sense of the word."
If more than 60 per cent of the West Bank that remains under Israel's total control was in Palestinian hands, with the support of the international community, Mr. Shaath said, "We could have created a paradise" .
At the same time, he said, he can not tell his people not to go to work in the settlements and deprive them of an income.
In 2010, Salam Fayyad, then technocratic prime minister who had won the trust of the West, had helped to set a bonfire at the products made in the settlements during a demonstration in Salfit, in the Palestinian city, not far from Barkan.
Palestinians working in the Barkan factories said they were angry at the Alon group's attacker for messing up things. Most of the time, they complained of much harsher security checks at the entrance to Barkan since the attack, which can keep them in line for more than a year. hour.
"He ruined things, of course," said Basel Abu Hijleh, a Palestinian who has been working for 14 years at the Lipski plant, which produces plastic products, sanitation products and plumbing products. "Now we have to arrive at 5 o'clock in the morning"
In the area, a recent weekday, there were neither soldiers nor visible security. Ofer Alter, the director of Lipski, says he's trying to create "a family atmosphere".
"The owner believes that peace comes from below," he said. "That if we work side by side, peace will come."
Many Palestinian workers greet him warmly as they show up at the afternoon station. In addition to sending its workers on annual vacation abroad, the company also offers loans.
"Here, in the interior, I feel we live an ideal," said Alter. "But who knows what can happen in an hour? As soon as they are out of the green door, I have no control over whoever it is. "
Israeli and Palestinian colleagues rarely meet outside of work. Israel forbids its citizens from entering Palestinian Authority-controlled cities, citing security concerns, and Palestinians generally require special permits to enter Israel. Once, Mr. Alter went with a group to Salfit to make a condolence call on the death of a worker's father and admits he was terrified.
Some companies, such as Barkan Winery and SodaStream, are trying to protect their activities abroad. They have left the West Bank under the pressure of an international boycott movement supporting the rights of Palestinians.
For Ofertex, a textile factory, Danny Mayerfeld, vice president of sales in the United States, said distributors would no longer work with the company in Europe. "It's a busy territory for them," he said. "They do not take into account the income of the Palestinians."
Mr. Mayerfeld, a native of New York City, said he had a personal weapon, but that he had left it at home, in accordance with the company's policy.
Udai Mustafa, 28, from Salfit, has worked at Ofertex for 10 years. His father and his brother also work there. Mr. Mustafa does not like Israeli settlements, but he must look after a family.
"I'm going from home to work, at home," he said. "I have a wife and three children. If you have work, take it wherever it is.
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