NABLUS, West Bank – Signs of economic distress are everywhere in Nablus, a once bustling center of Palestinian trade now paralyzed by Israel's increasing control over life and work in the West Bank.
School-age children sell candy for change and upscale hotels and restaurants are closed. Unemployed men smoke cigarettes on street corners while taxis sit idle and their routes out of the city are blocked by Israeli troops.
“The Palestinian people are used to crises,” said Iyad Kadi, head of the Nablus Chamber of Commerce, but “what I see now is something I have never experienced before.” This winter, local officials said hundreds of families had come forward for the first time to ask for cash, food or basic heating.
“At least we had the basic needs to survive before,” Kadi said, adding that the pressure Israel is putting on the West Bank is pushing it to the brink.
As Israel besieges and pressures Gaza, Palestinians here say it is also waging an economic war in the West Bank. Since the Hamas attacks on October 7, Israel has imposed sweeping restrictions on the Palestinian economy, revoking work permits, hindering freedom of movement and even withholding tax revenue for the Palestinian Authority for months.
According to the World Bank, the measures, which Israel says were taken for security reasons, led to massive job losses, unpaid salaries and a sharp decline in local production. They have also stoked fears of widespread unrest and raised concerns that more young men, particularly in impoverished refugee camps, will join militant groups to take up arms against Israel.
“They are killing us economically,” said Jamal Tirawi, a local Fatah party leader in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus. Officials there say thousands of the camp's roughly 33,000 residents were employed in Israel before the attack, mostly as construction workers.
About 70 percent of workers there now receive no salary, compared with 35 percent who were unemployed five months ago, said Ahmed Thoukan, co-chair of the camp's People's Service Committee. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, unemployment across the West Bank reached 29 percent by the end of 2023, leading to a sharp decline in gross domestic product.
Israel has long exercised significant control over the lives and movement of Palestinians here. It captured the West Bank from Jordan in 1967 and ruled for decades through military occupation and the construction of sprawling settlements for Israeli citizens.
In the 1990s, after the first Palestinian uprising, the Oslo Accords granted the Palestinian Authority limited autonomy in civil affairs, including the economy, as a step toward peace. But that peace never materialized and the Palestinians still rely heavily on Israel for jobs, market access, tax collection and the import of raw materials and essential goods.
Over the years, Palestinian workers have formed the backbone of Israel's construction industry and become a reliable source of cheap labor for the booming agricultural and tourism sectors. According to the World Bank, workers from Gaza and the West Bank could earn three times as much in Israel as they could in the Palestinian territories.
But after October 7, when Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, authorities imposed a near-total ban on Palestinians working in Israel or its West Bank settlements. According to the World Bank, the government has revoked the work permits of more than 170,000 Palestinian workers. According to Shaher Sa'ed, general secretary of the Palestinian General Confederation of Trade Unions, tens of thousands more people who worked illegally in Israel are now unemployed.
“The issue of work permits for Palestinians is based on ongoing and comprehensive security considerations,” Ophir Falk, foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said in a statement. “Israel is vigilant on this issue to prevent further Palestinian terror.”
For Abdullah Khezaran, 29, the money he earned as a maintenance worker in Tel Aviv enabled him to get married and start a family. Now unemployed, he spends his days sleeping or playing cards, plagued by fear that he will not be able to support his wife and children.
At a roundabout in Nablus, 53-year-old Taysir Dabeek sells parsley and lettuce. He used to earn between $85 and $110 a day painting houses in Tel Aviv. Now he earns just $15 a day to buy essentials for his family of six.
“God help us,” said Khezaran, standing on a nearby street corner.
Checkpoints and roadblocks
But even sourcing fresh produce or other goods, including from West Bank cities, is costly and inconvenient. The West Bank, slightly smaller than the state of Delaware, was already bisected by checkpoints and roadblocks, including a 450-mile-long barrier that snakes through Palestinian land.
According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, Israel has set up dozens of new military checkpoints and barred towns and villages from access to major roads in the past five months. The tightening restrictions have stifled local trade and manufacturing, key pillars of the West Bank economy, and prevented another 67,000 Palestinians from physically returning to work, the World Bank said.
In Nablus, nestled in a valley in the upper West Bank, Israeli forces have long maintained checkpoints at the city's four exits. Two of them were closed by the military in the fall so that no traffic could drive in or out.
They also installed dozens of metal gates and mounds of earth to block roads around Nablus, Kadi said, and cut off routes to surrounding villages. A spokeswoman for the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli government agency tasked with overseeing civil policy in the West Bank, did not respond to requests for comment.
Drivers are now stuck for hours trying to leave the city. Students who are enrolled at the University of Nablus but live outside the city will drop out of their studies. Palestinian citizens of Israel used to travel to Nablus to shop or visit relatives. But now they're staying home, keeping the money out of the local economy.
Nablus' once-thriving furniture industry has all but collapsed due to the sheer difficulty of transporting goods in and out of the West Bank. The Titi family faces the same problem with the sesame seeds they import to make the popular condiment tahini, which they sell through their chain of stores. The skyrocketing costs could force the family to close at least one of the businesses, the family said.
If time passes and there is no relief, “the potential for an explosion becomes greater,” said Michael Milshtein, a former COGAT adviser on Palestinian affairs.
Widespread loss of income is causing despair and rising social tensions, particularly in crowded refugee camps in the West Bank, where local leaders and residents say domestic disputes are becoming more common and some parents are taking their children out of school to put them to work .
One day, a woman was strolling through the narrow streets of Balata, collecting aluminum cans to sell as scrap metal to feed her four children. Volunteers at the local food pantry said they are preparing to serve twice as many families this year for the holy month of Ramadan, which begins Monday.
Young men in the camp “are under a lot of pressure and unemployment is very high there,” said Nablus Deputy Mayor Hussam Shakhshir. But they wouldn't normally turn to crime, he said, but would instead “revolt against the occupation.”
Thoukan, the Balata camp official, said he had already seen young men take up arms after losing their jobs.
Abu Hussam, 28, used to earn about $100 a day as a construction worker in Tel Aviv. But Israel revoked his work permit last year after learning of his brother's militant activities.
Abu Hussam, who asked to be identified by his nickname for fear of retaliation from authorities, said he was unable to find work locally and eventually joined a local fighter battalion.
Balata is a place that values armed resistance: children wear miniature portraits of fallen militants around their necks and ride bicycles unfazed, while men with automatic rifles zoom past on motorcycles. On the walls of Abu Hussam's living room hang posters of his dead comrades killed in clashes with Israeli forces.
“Resistance is our right,” he said. But Abu Hussam also regularly received cash from a popular commander named Zoufi, who was killed by Israel in November.
“What do you expect from them?” Amal Tirawi, director of the Balata Women's Center, said of the workers who have lost their jobs in Israel. “There are also university graduates among the militants.”
But she said: “No mother wants her sons killed or injured.”
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