Since the beginning of its deadly onslaught on the Palestinian enclave, Israel has revoked work permits for tens of thousands of Palestinian laborers and sought to replace them with workers from South Asia.
In November, Sri Lanka’s embassy reached an agreement with the Israeli government to allow the immediate hiring of 10,000 Sri Lankans on farms and construction sites.
The first groups of workers left for Israel this month, raising both ethical and safety concerns.
“We should not exploit this situation,” said Sudath Dewapura, president of the Sri Lanka chapter of the World Fellowship of Buddhists, a group behind interfaith rallies in solidarity with Palestine.
In desperate need of funds after going through an economic crisis last year, Sri Lanka has been trying to secure employment for its nationals overseas, where they can earn much more than at home.
But the decision to send them to conflict zones and a state that imposes apartheid has fueled resistance and criticism.
“We totally oppose this form of bringing dollars to the country,” Dewapura told Arab News.
Shreen Abdul Saroor, a prominent rights activist who has been leading the Gaza solidarity protests, said that sending workers to Israel helped Tel Aviv’s “century-old and well thought out ethnic cleansing.”
More than 21,110 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands wounded since Israel launched its bombardment of Gaza from air, land and sea. The injured have struggled to get medical help as airstrikes have destroyed most of the hospitals and clinics in the enclave.
“The more workers we send in to replace Palestinian workers means we are buying into their annihilation of the Palestinian state,” Saroor told Arab News, echoing resistance in India where trade unions last month said that sending workers to Israel would amount to complicity in the “ongoing genocidal war against Palestinians.”
Ameen Izzadeen, international editor of The Sunday Times weekly who joined the protests in Colombo, said that Sri Lanka opposed apartheid rule in South Africa to the point that after some of its cricketers toured the country in the 1980s they were barred from playing international games.
“That was the commitment that Sri Lanka had, so similar commitment is warranted with regard to Israel and its horrible practices in occupied Palestinian territory,” he told Arab News.
As Sri Lanka heads the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories, Izzadeen said the government knew what was happening in Gaza and the West Bank.
“In spite of this knowledge and in spite of this awareness, if the government is sending labor force, it’s totally immoral,” he said.
“I know the Sri Lankan government is desperate for dollars, but there is a time when we need to make some sacrifices. The government should stop it immediately and that’s what we’ve been calling for.”
Dias is among 20,000 workers that Sri Lanka, desperate for dollars and remittances, plans to send to Israel starting early next month to work in the farm and construction sectors, a Sri Lankan minister told Reuters on Thursday.
Israel’s farms, most of which are in the center and south of the country, traditionally rely on thousands of Thai and Palestinian workers to till the land and bring in the crops.
But many Thais fled Israel after the Hamas assault on Oct. 7, while the Palestinians have largely been banned from the workforce, forcing farms to send out an SOS for workers during the harvest.
Dias, 39, said he has experience living through conflict.
“We lived during a war in Sri Lanka,” he said, referring to Sri Lanka’s civil war against Tamil separatists between 1983 and 2009.
“I have worked in Colombo where there were suicide bombs going off at one point and even in conflict areas in the east around 2005. So, I think we can manage. We are familiar with working on a farm so I’m confident we can face anything.”
He says his monthly salary of 72,000 rupees ($219) is not enough to sustain his family of five because of the high cost of living. Dias expects to make about 700,000 rupees as a farmhand in Israel, where he plans to work for five years.
Sri Lanka’s labor and foreign employment minister, Manusha Nanayakkara, said they had received more than 10,000 applications to work on Israeli farms and workers’ security would be considered.
“We are also looking at sending another 10,000 workers for the construction sector next.”
Israel launched its war in Gaza after gunmen from Hamas burst across the border fence, killing 1,200 people and seizing about 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, more than 14,000 Gazans have been killed by Israeli bombardment, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled territory.
The Sri Lankan workers will join some 9,000 compatriots already in Israel, working in farming and care for the elderly.
Sri Lanka, an island of 22 million, saw its economy contract 7.8 percent last year during the country’s worst economic crisis in more than seven decades, pushing 2.5 million people into poverty, according to the World Bank.
It has seen a steep increase in the number of people migrating since the crisis, with about 312,000 leaving in 2022 and 268,000 this year, government data shows. They have gone to countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.