For the last two years, the owner of the Salhab Supermarket in the Palestinian neighborhood of Dahiyat al-Barid just outside the municipal boundaries of northeastern Jerusalem has watched, from across his store, Palestinian men die climbing the Israeli-built Separation Wall, which separates East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Some men are killed when Israeli border police shoot them; others die falling from the eight-meter-high slab of concrete. In January 2026, storeowner Salhab, who is also a paramedic, attended to a man who slipped from the rope he was using to cross over the wall, breaking his leg and rupturing one of his main arteries.

“He lost more than a liter of blood,” Salhab, who did not want to give his first name, told Jerusalem Story.1 “The break in his leg was so bad that when it heals, they’ll need to put a plate on his leg. He will probably walk with a limp from now on.”

Yet despite the risk of injury and fatality, Palestinians continue jumping over the wall to work in Israel—something they have been denied since Israel launched its genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023. Before then, approximately 120,000 Palestinians held official permits to work in Israel and 40,000 more in illegal Israeli settlements across the occupied West Bank.2 Suddenly at that time, these hundreds of thousands of workers found a red sign in their Almunasseq apps, indicating that even though the permits were still valid, they would not allow them to enter Israel. Critically, since the frozen permits were not actually canceled, the workers could not access their pension fund.

In a public statement issued in December 2023, the right-wing Israel National Labor Federation (Histadrut Le’umit), historically linked to the Likud Party and previously claiming to represent Palestinian workers, called for the war in Gaza to be used as an opportunity to permanently end the employment of Palestinians in Israel and replace them with foreign migrant labor.3

More than two years later and with a so-called ceasefire in place, only a quarter of Palestinian permits have been reinstated—mainly those for work in the illegal settlements, which mostly lie on the West Bank side of the Separation Wall.4

“After more than a year, I decided I had no choice. I must cross,” Hani, a West Bank resident who worked for 32 years in Israel before October 7, 2023, when Israel froze his permit, told Jerusalem Story.5

During the first year of the war, Hani, whose name has been changed for his protection, dipped into his savings and pension to get by after losing his regular income. Now, with that money dried up, a family to support, and his landlord threatening eviction if he does not pay rent soon, Hani has been crossing the wall to make ends meet.

In January 2026, Hani paid NIS 600 (about $190)—the usual rate—to a smuggler to help him enter Israel, but Israeli border police caught him when he was climbing over the wall from the town of al-Ram into East Jerusalem and sent him back to the other side. A few days later, on his second try, he made it over the wall, into a smuggler’s vehicle, and to his job in northern Israel.

“The amount of money I make when I work in Israel for three or four days, I couldn’t make in one month in the West Bank,” Hani said. “The pay is much higher [in Israel].”

The outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza exacerbated an already-crumbling West Bank economy. As part of the Oslo Accords—the interim peace agreement signed in the 1990s between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—Israel’s Ministry of Finance collects tax revenue on the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) behalf and transfers the funds each month. Since 2019, though, Israel has withheld the PA’s tax revenue—an amount now reaching $4.4 billion6—as punishment for the government compensating families of Palestinian prisoners and Palestinians killed by Israeli forces.7 Without this money, the PA cannot pay employee salaries—pushing the West Bank deeper into poverty and sending unemployment skyrocketing.

While Hani made it to work on his second attempt, others have not been as lucky.

On the same day in May 2025, three of Nabil’s cousins were attempting to climb over the wall in Hebron together when Israeli forces shot at them. Two were killed and the other was paralyzed from the waist down and remains in a coma.

“I wouldn’t put myself in danger to try and cross into Israel because of what happened to my family,” Nabil, who lives in the West Bank town of ‘Anata and worked in Israel up until his permit was frozen, told Jerusalem Story.8

From October 7, 2023, to the end of 2025, 47 Palestinian workers have been killed and at least 1,500 have been injured attempting to climb over the Separation Wall, according to the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions.9

The risk of death looms even larger as Israeli media reported Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir eased open-fire regulations against Palestinians entering Israel without a permit. Under the new procedures, quietly changed in October 2025, police can shoot at the lower limbs of Palestinians attempting to climb over the wall if they suspect an attack.10

“I’m afraid to go out and work in Israel,” Nabil said. “So, I’m waiting for a solution, but I don’t know whom my family and I can turn to or who can give us assistance, if we’re not able to go back and work in Israel.”

Drowning in debt, the PA cannot provide unemployment benefits, while Palestinians who worked for Israeli employers had to choose between keeping their frozen permits active or canceling them to be able to withdraw their pension funds for support. More than 50 percent of Palestinian workers chose to give up their permits to access their retirement funds, meaning that if and when Israel lifts the ban on entry, they will then have to reapply to work in Israel,11 with little to no guarantee of approval.

The pressure to work in Israel is compounded further for workers who are in debt to the PA.

“We feel haunted by the two sides,” Hani told Jerusalem Story. “In Israel, we’re at risk of being caught, and with the PA, when we go back [to the West Bank], the ones who are in debt are trying to hide or run away because the PA will come after them and arrest them or prosecute them for the unpaid debts.”

Even if Palestinians do make it over the wall, however, that does not guarantee them a wage, let alone a livable one.

“A lot of people told us that they got half the salary the first week and then the second week, [the employer] told them, ‘at the end of the week, I’ll pay you,’ and then they didn’t pay them,” Assaf Adiv, director of the Israeli MAAN Workers Association, told Jerusalem Story.12 “It’s all without papers; they are working, of course, without any kind of formal situation. So, it’s all by the agreement that is between two people.”

With Palestinians in the West Bank putting their bodies on the line to work in Israel, the Dahiyat al-Barid neighborhood in Jerusalem—a regular crossing point for Palestinian laborers attempting to climb over the wall—is caught in the crosshairs.

Tear gas, fired by border officers when they see Palestinians jumping down on the Israel side, regularly floods the neighborhood’s homes, stores, and schools.

“Some have shortness of breath, some have problems with their eyes, and some have asthma, so we’re worried about the health of the kids,” Ismat Jikhleb, principal of the Renaissance School that faces the wall, told Jerusalem Story, as he described how recess is often interrupted by the spread of tear gas.13

Not only are residents’ and students’ breathing compromised but their movement as well. On February 10, 2026, the Israeli Border Police and Ministry of Defense ordered residents living along the road next to the wall to move their cars and then erected concrete cubes at the street’s entrance—completely closing it to vehicular traffic.14

“The [school] buses cannot come anymore [to the school]. They don’t want people to park and stand here,” Jikhleb said. “It’s very difficult for the kids, like little ones, to walk all the way down and meet [the buses] at the roundabout.”

Israeli officials told residents that closing the road was necessary for “security purposes” to prevent Palestinians from climbing over the wall.15

In reality, however, this means restricting the neighborhood’s access to visitors, deliveries, and emergency vehicles. Before, ambulances would arrive frequently to help Palestinians who were injured while attempting to climb over the wall. While the sirens were disruptive and traumatizing for the neighborhood, it meant the possibility of a life being saved.

Now, the only cars permitted are those belonging to Israeli border patrols.

“The presence of the army and the soldiers here is a big challenge for the students,” Jikhleb said. “They see them on a daily basis, because they’re constantly driving up and down and they never stop going around the area.”

Salhab, who’s seen at least four Palestinians die jumping over the wall, explained that the army has transformed the neighborhood into a practice battlefield.

And the target? Struggling Palestinian workers who feel they have no other option. Their backs are literally up against the wall.

“The people who climb over just leave it up to their gods,” Salhab said. “That there is a possibility they’ll make it, and then there’s always a possibility they might not make it back.”