Netanyahu, Barkat clash over delayed decision to allow in foreign workers to replace Palestinians

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Economy Minister Nir Barkat, a senior member of the ruling Likud party, trade public barbs over the issue of foreign workers ahead of Wednesday’s vote on the government’s proposed amended 2024 budget.

Speaking at a press conference in Tel Aviv, Barkat, who has been floated as a possible contender to replace Netanyahu as head of the Likud party, accuses the prime minister of delaying a cabinet decision to “allow the arrival of foreign workers from peaceful countries” to replace Palestinians barred from Israel following the October 7 attack.

“Prime Minister, returning the Palestinian workers to Israel is a grave mistake” both in terms of security and the economy,” he says, claiming that he had been stymied in his “repeated attempts to advance the arrival of tens of thousands of workers from peaceful countries.”

“Unfortunately, the prime minister is not bringing the decision regarding the entry of foreign workers from peaceful countries to the cabinet meeting. I am afraid that there are those who are delaying the decision to enable the return of Palestinian laborers to work in Israel.”

“Until now, the government has approved the entry of a few thousand foreign workers,” he continues. “The damage caused to the Israeli economy is in the tens of billions of shekels.”

Israel sharply restricted Palestinian entry to Israel after the Hamas attacks of October 7, in which thousands of Gazan terrorists rampaged across southern Israel, slaughtering some 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages.

Dozens of foreign nationals, most of them from Thailand, were killed or kidnapped during the assault, and some remain hostage in Gaza.

Thousands of foreign farmhands in southern Israel left the country in the wake of the attacks.

The labor gap was also been exacerbated by hundreds of thousands of able-bodied Israelis being called up for the war.