…The Israeli tied visa regime, known as the ‘binding arrangement’, provides a path into the country for seasonal migrant labourers. It exchanges a tied relationship with a designated employer for a legal job in the construction, care and agriculture sectors, and to a lesser extent in services and industry. These sectors are characterised by harsh working conditions, long and exhausting working hours, and low wages. They are all sectors that struggle to recruit local workers…

Since October 2023, most Palestinian workers have not been allowed to return to work in Israel. The Israeli government has adopted measures to replace at least some of them with migrant workers…

Until 2020, Palestinian workers were bound to the employer listed in their work permit. … Workers were also subject to constant surveillance while in Israel, reflecting the state’s perception of their presence as a threat to national security…

In 2020, a new arrangement was adopted to end the binding of Palestinian construction workers...

This development was significant as a defence of the constitutional rights of non-citizens, but the judgment achieved little on the ground….

Strangely, the same supreme court that rejected the binding arrangement as “a modern form of slavery” has subsequently and repeatedly approved new forms of binding…

[Article also refers to the construction company Yılmazlar]