A Gazan Worked in Israeli Kibbutzim for Decades. Then Came Oct. 7, by Yuval Abraham – 6 November 2023

From +972 Magazine

Among the victims of Hamas’ massacres in southern Israel were several Palestinian laborers from the Gaza Strip. Here is one of those stories.

Hashim al-Birawi was born in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, but spent much of his life in the nearby Israeli communities just a few miles from his home. For 40 years, beginning when he was still a teenager, he worked in the kibbutzim of Nir Am, Yad Mordechai, Nir Yitzhak, and Ruhama — first as a laborer and then a contractor, as well as in citrus, banana, and avocado orchards.

Al-Birawi was one of several thousands of Palestinians from the occupied territories who received permits to work inside Israel — sometimes to even work on land from which they or their ancestors were expelled during the Nakba. Issued by a bureaucratic system that serves as a central mechanism of control over Palestinians, such permits are a precarious but vital lifeline for many laborers unable to find work or economic prospects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, due to the debilitating impact of the Israeli occupation. While the permit regime exposes many Palestinian workers to various forms of exploitation, it appears al-Birawi, at least on the interpersonal level, generally had a more positive experience. “They treated us like family there,” says Nabil, al-Birawi’s 54-year-old brother, of Hashim’s employers.

On the nightmarish morning of Oct. 7, al-Birawi started his day in the Bedouin city of Rahat, in the Naqab/Negev, where he would often stay overnight instead of returning home to Gaza when he was working at a kibbutz. Just before 7 a.m. the gray van that al-Birawi and six other Gazan workers were in, together with the driver, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, came under fire as it approached the Sa’ad intersection, 2.5 miles from the Gaza fence. Twenty minutes later, al-Birawi was dead.

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Yuval Abraham is a journalist and filmmaker based in Jerusalem.

A Gazan Worked in Israeli Kibbutzim for Decades. Then Came Oct. 7, by Yuval Abraham – 6 November 2023

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