Israelis are embarking on a similar argument about foreign workers to the one being played out in the UK.
Israel's modern agriculture could not survive another day with the help of foreign workers, according to Eitan Ben-David, secretary of the Moshav movement in Israel.
He reacted to what he called "a secret government plan" to reduce and even cut to a bare minimum the number of foreign workers in the country's agricultural sector. Replacing foreign workers with unemployed Israelis, as supposedly planned, is not a realistic plan, as it will lead to a reduction in the volume of export of agricultural export, while many Israelis who are indirectly connected with the agricultural sector will be unemployed, he said.
Ben-David added that the need for foreign workers stems from the processes of efficiency in the agricultural sector, noting that 2006 registered a significant rise in the export volume of fresh produce which for the first time crossed the line of US$1 billion.
All this is attributed to Israeli know-how and the long-term investments in agricultural R&D and the availability of foreign workers. Ben-David criticised the heavy taxes imposed on Israeli farmers for employing foreign workers and the harsh policies regarding the terms for employing foreign labour.
"Israel is not the only country which has to challenge the issue of foreign workers.. In most of the agricultural sectors in the developed countries, such as the US, Holland, Germany, Spain, and Italy, most of the workers are foreign. He added that in the past some 20,000 Palestinian workers were employed in Israel's agricultural sector, and replacing them by Israeli unemployed labour "did not work out”.
