Position paper emanating from Lawyers For Justice
Based on the declaration of a state of emergency in the occupying Power(Israel), especially after the increase in the number of cases of Corona Kovid virus (19), the Palestinian workers found themselves obliged to choose between staying at home for their safety or keep their living.
Thousands of the Palestinian labor have been asked by the Palestinian prime minister to arrange their priorities within a maximum of three days before preventing the movement between the Palestinian territories and Israel, and owing to their economic conditions they choose to work .
The forced movement of the labors it has an impact on them health, dignity and to them labor rights. According to these remarkable issues Lawyers for Justice decide to highlight the framework of Israelis laws and the international references.
The geographic move of labors from Palestine to Israel applies to the articles of The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families which should be implemented in parallel with other international references, including the basic United Nations human rights instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants – the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and political Rights – and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Conclusion of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of civilian Persons;
These international references have given migrant workers from one region to another rights based on equality between them and what governments in these regions harness to their workers and it’s also recommend to take several prevention procedures especially during emergency cases such as epidemiological. Under the current situation of declaration of emergency in Israel the pillars of labor market it have an obligation to implement the international references recommendations, as they constitute the minimum rights. Here, lawyers for justice mention that the declaration of a state of emergency and the outbreak of the epidemic do not give employers any powers or justifications to prejudice the workers ’rights of the Palestinian worker, whether it concerns wages, working hours, vacations, personal safety controls, insurance, In the case that the situation imposes exceptional limits on these rights, the human dignity of workers must be preserved, and must take into account the guarantees contained in the body of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian – workers coming from an occupied territory – including take the necessary measures to preserve their physical and psychological needs arising from the direct and none direct effects to declare a state of emergency, whether by the regular authorities or individuals or groups of citizens of the occupying power, especially that the Palestinian workers will be forcibly resided in inappropriate living conditions that obliged the authorities of the state to tackle intervention procedures in particular the authority of the population and migration, the Ministry of Economy, Labor, and the Ministries of Health and Interior, to provide temporary living environment for decent where the human dignity of workers respected and safeguarded their rights.
Scrutiny, we find that the Israeli labor law organized foreign employment, and gave them equal rights for their nationals, but successive Israeli authorities imposed a systematic living condition on the Palestinian worker that forced them to emigrate to work within the green line, with rights that are not consistent with those guaranteed by domestic legislation; as we mentioned above, the declare a state of emergency provides a fertile environment for employers to violate the rights of this category, bearing in mind that the Israeli Emergency Law of the year (2006) and its amendments gave the political and military leadership in Israel the authority to Adopt fair labor policies and procedures. However, the disparity of political power, especially in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict left Thousands of Palestinian workers out of the benefits of these measures. It is important to mention that the International Labor Organization lunching a specialized study for examination, the impact of Corona Kovid virus (19) on the workforce and its rights which is stamped by adopting three labor policies to face the consequences and effects of this situation.
Lawyers for Justice high recommend the Palestinian government to provide the families of the workers with the basic needs to enhance their sense of human security and dignity, and emphasizes that the violation of labor rights constitutes a violation that requires domestic and international civil and criminal prosecution Therefore, by paying attention to the international tools mentioned in these references, including the protocol for individual complaints, lawyers for justice team will provide representation and legal assistance services for each worker who violated his legitimate rights or lived in conditions that diminished his human dignity while he was at his workplace in the occupied interior, to prevent damage Has caught up with him, and we also appeal to all partners to intensify efforts to monitor and document what violations of this category may face.