Around 82,000 Palestinians worked in the country’s construction industry prior to the assault, accounting for a third of the sector’s workforce. Left without these workers – as well as another 2,000 from China and Eastern Europe who returned home after Oct 7 – construction sites across Israel have gone quiet, significantly denting the country’s economy. The labour shortage has also been exacerbated by the mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of Israeli reservists for the war against Hamas.
The Israel Builders Association (IBA) estimates that the industry, one of the country’s biggest economic sectors with a market size valued at US$71 billion (S$94 billion) in 2022, has been operating at just 15 per cent of its pre-war capacity. This has brought in an urgency to recruit fresh foreign workers, and representatives from IBA will be in India and Sri Lanka later this week to screen applicants for various roles such as plastering, ceramic tiling, building formwork and iron bendin