Israelis rescue 10 Indian workers kidnapped by Palestinians

The Palestinians attempted to use the workers’ passports to cross into Israel, but Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint, suspicious of fraud, stopped them.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Ten Indian workers, kidnapped by Palestinians and held for a month in a village outside Jerusalem, were rescued by Israeli authorities, Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority (PIIA) announced on Wednesday.

The workers were lured to the village of al-Za’ayem with promises of construction jobs, only to be confined and robbed of their passports.

The Palestinians attempted to use the workers’ passports to cross into Israel, but Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint, suspicious of fraud, stopped them.

The workers were rescued overnight in a joint operation involving the Population and Immigration Authority, the IDF, and the Justice Ministry.

The workers were then moved to a secure location, while their employment status is still being determined.

Around 16,000 Indian workers have arrived over the past year, amid plans to recruit thousands more. While this effort has helped alleviate the labor shortage, it still doesn’t fully replace the 80,000 Palestinians from Judea and Samaria who previously worked in the sector. This has led to slower construction and the risk of a housing shortage.

Currently, around 30,000 foreign workers are employed, a significant decrease from pre-war levels. By late 2024, construction activity was approximately 25% below pre-conflict levels.

Despite the growing number of Indian workers, they still do not meet the demand. Although there is no immediate housing shortage, delays in the delivery of new housing could arise. With Israel’s population growing at a rate of 2% annually, such delays may eventually cause shortages.

Proposals to allow PA workers back into Jewish communities were met with widespread opposition. A survey conducted last year in Eli, a town of about 4,500 people in the Binyamin region of southern Samaria, revealed that 82% of residents opposed the idea, even with additional security measures in place.

Two polls conducted last year found that around two-thirds of Palestinians in Judea and Samaria supported the October 7 attacks, during which approximately 6,000 Hamas-led terrorists breached the Gaza border, killed around 1,200 people, injured thousands more, and took over 250 hostages.