Table 1 

Employment of Labour Force, West Bank-Gaza (in thousands)

Year Total In Gaza-West Bank In Israel % of Total In Israel

1968 135 130 5 3 
1969 163 151 12 7 
1970 173 152 21 12 
1972 189 137 52 28 
1974 210 141 69 33 
1975 205 139 66 32 
1976 206 141 65 32 
1977 205 142 63 31 
1978 212 144 68 32

Source: Statistical Abstract of Israel (1978); Administered Territories Statistical euarterly 9:1 (1979), quoted in Congress Report. 1980, p. 13.

It is difficult to arrive at a reliable figure for the number of workers from the WBGS actually employed in Israel, but the latest figures indicate a total of 44,000 who are legally employed through Israeli Labour Exchanges (excluding Jerusalem), and another 26,000 who are illegally employed.'2 Of those working "illegally", nearly 20 percent are under 17 years of age, and under Israeli law are not entitled to receive work permits." In the first years of the occupation, Palestinian workers from the WBGS were not allowed to seek employment in Israel. The authorities feared that such employment would aggravate the unemployment problem within Israel, where the economy had been undergoing a severe recession prior to 1967. As of mid-July 1968, however, a labour shortage emerged and Palestinian workers were allowed to take employment as day-labourers within the green line. The work available was, and remains, in the lowest echelons of unskilled and semi-skilled labour. An Israeli report in 1977 calculated that 44 percent of workers from the WBGS working in Israel were employed in unskilled jobs, 22 percent were skilled workers, and the rest were employed in agriculture and the service sector.'" Although workers from the WBGS make up only 8 percent of the total active Israeli labour force, their concentration in certain sectors such as construction, and increasingly agriculture, is an indicator of the importance they have come to assume within the Israeli economy.
At the same time, employment in Israel has firmly integrated the economy of the WBGS into the Israeli economy, and the income derived from this

12. The Israeli Economist (August, 1980), p. 25. 13. ILO Report, p. 139. 14. Ibid.

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