Palestinians in West Bank count the days until they can work again

Nasser Yacoub, one of about 130,000 West Bank workers banned for ostensible security reasons from Israel since October 7, 2023, seems like an unlikely security threat.

When The Jewish Independent met him at his immaculate and spacious home in Wadi Fukin village, sandwiched between the town of Tsur Hadassah and the illegal settlement of Beitar Ilit, the 60-year-old father of three spoke of sending greetings and phone calls for Rosh Hashanah to his many former clients in Tsur Hadassah who are also his friends. He had worked there for three decades.

“I’m still friends with them now but only by phone, I used to visit them before Rosh Hashanah,” he says in fluent Hebrew. The Israelis would also come to his hillside home and sip sweet tea or join for a meal.  So trusted was Yacoub, a builder and handyman, that his friends would give him keys to their homes, sometimes calling him from abroad and asking him to do a job.

He recalls that work was never easy because he had to wake up very early and wait at a crowded checkpoint, before starting a long day in Tsur Hadassah. Still, by working hard and being widely recommended, he earned a comfortable living.

He was looking to marry off his older son Leith and to buy him a house when Hamas carried out its brutal attack, shaking Israel and triggering cancellation of all permits for West Bank Palestinians to enter the country.

“We thought it would be one, two or three months of this terrible war, that it would pass. We were wrong in our assessment,” Yacoub said.