By Shush Mula and Shlomo Tsazanah
JERUSALEM — In the centre of the city, children between the ages of 8 and 14 are working in a child slave market. It's the Mahane Yehuda market. The children, residents of East Jerusalem, work there every day of the year, in all sorts of weather. From 7 in the morning until 9 in the evening, they unload produce from transport trailers, work as carriers, sellers and cleaners.
The luckiest among them have steady work. The others come daily to the Agrippas-Mahane Yehuda intersection and wait there for job offers from the merchants. Sometimes some of them don't find work until the afternoon hours. Sometimes they wait for the whole day only to return home in the evening — empty-handed.
An investigation conducted by Kol Ha'ir revealed that their wage is very low — 20 shekels (about A$10) for a full day of work. Whoever leaves in the middle of the day's work doesn't get a red cent. It seems that almost every stall in the market employs Arab children. The children relate that their employers exploit, degrade, humiliate and physically abuse them. Sometimes, after a few hours of work, the employer sends them away without any compensation, and they are forced to start the whole process over again. Also, the child who finishes his work ahead of time is sent away without getting the money he earned.
The older children, between the ages of 14 and 15, have a higher status among the child workers and can defend the other members of their family who work with them. They are not the ones who get beaten. It's the other children, primarily the new ones who are trying to move up in the system, who get beaten by the other children, who take the better jobs.
Last Thursday afternoon, the owner of a vegetable stand violently beat an eight-year-old boy who had been working for him unloading produce from crates. A., an eye-witness, relates: "I saw a lot of people gathered around a vegetable stand. As I got closer I saw the owner of the stand viciously beating an Arab boy. He hit him on his back, on his head, on
his face — yelling and cursing at him. The child was crying and covering his head with his hands. I was surprised to see that the people who were watching what was taking place didn't even try to break them up. Apparently the child did something wrong and the owner of the stand lost control and beat him up. The boy walked over to one side and I went after him to try to talk to him. The child turned around, wiped the tears from his eyes, and went back to work."
The boy didn't come back to work the next day. The owners of the stands nearby where the incident occurred say that it's none of their business. "Everyone does whatever he thinks best. Why get involved with him over a boy — and an Arab boy at that? The boy probably did something wrong. Nobody gets beat up for nothing."
It doesn't seem to bother the customers much either. Eti Ben-Tovim from the National Council for the Welfare of the Child says that they get a lot of anonymous complaints about child beatings, but when they ask those same people to go to the police to file a complaint, they hang up the phone.
During the early hours of the morning the children work mainly unloading produce. The ones who don't get work unloading produce wander among the owners of the stands begging for work. They lie about their age and are willing to do any type of work, even though it is sometimes beyond their physical capabilities.
When we arrived at the market and asked about the going rate for unloading a truck, a number of children leaped towards us thinking that we had something to offer. One of the stronger ones among them forced the others out of the way, landing one of the smaller children onto the floor along the way, and offered us [a price of] 40 shekels. Another older boy, who was sitting with the others, yelled at him in Arabic: "Are you crazy? What are you offering such a cheap price for? These guys look like they don't know what's going on — tell them 60 shekels and they'll give it to you."
In the meantime, several boys aged between 9 and 11, agilely climb into the back of a truck loaded with watermelons and quickly pass the heavy watermelons from hand to hand while the owner of the stand watches
them.
Najib, from Jebel Mukaber, is 11. How much money do they pay you for work like this? "15-20 shekels."
How long does it take to unload a truck like this? "It depends on how many workers there are and the type of produce. It usually takes one or two hours.
Do you have brothers who also work here? "Yes, of course." Who is the money for? "For me."
And how do they treat you? "Well, sometimes not very good. A few times they didn't even give me the money — they gave me a beating instead. One time the other children stole the money I had earned. But it's good here — there's a lot of work."
On the main street of the market sits Nabil, 10
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55D>, selling eggs. He is considered to be the most famous Arab kid in the market because in spite of his young age he already has steady work. He sits on a high chair next to the owner of the stand.
"I've been working in the market for two and a half years. In the beginning I used to get beat up a lot. They said I was too little, I don't have strong shoulders for loading things, the children would laugh at me, and the bosses didn't want to give me work. I did it all — they gave me pennies. I once worked for half an hour, then the boss beat me and told me to leave without giving me any money. Now I have a steady job and respect."
How much do you earn? "350 shekels a week."
Do your parents know that you work here? "Sure. I give them part of the money."
The owner of a fruit stand says that the business is simply disgusting. "I don't hire small children, only the older ones. I would like to see which one of those merchants would let his own children work like horses under the sun. Their children are all off in
summer camps."
The owner of a local steak house doesn't understand what all the ruckus is about: "We're helping young workers, who have a difficult time at home, to earn a few shekels. There are temporary workers who work one or two hours. There's no coercion or slavery — they do it of their own free will. You can find the very same things in every market in the country."
Abed, 13, from Silwan, carries a large pan of hot pitta bread on his head. When he pours them into the hand cart, a few fall onto the ground and the owner of the stand hits him on the head. "Ya, jackass; ya, idiot — watch what you are doing!"
After having carried a large crate of tomatoes on his back, Hamid, 11, sits for a rest in one of the side streets of the market. He smokes a cigarette like an adult. "I live in Silwan; I haven't been working here for very long." When he notices the camera, he covers his face and leaves the area.
The general director of the National Council for the Welfare of the Child, Dr Yitzhak Kadman: "The law is being violated here. It is against the law for children to work ... There are children beneath the age of 10 who are working, and in spite of all of the promises, nothing is being done about it. The minister of labor has to start sending out supervisors not only to locate workers from the Philippines but to impose fines of 2000 shekels on anyone who is caught employing a child. It's a real slave market going on in the centre of the city."
The Minister of Labor and Welfare was surprised to hear from Kol Ha'ir about what is going on in the market. She decided to conduct a law-enforcement operation. Thirty-seven children between the ages of eight and 13 were caught along with four employers.d the children only a few shekels for a day's work. The legal division of the ministry intends to press charges against the employers.
From the interrogation of the children, it seems that they lied to concerning their wages. Two of the children who had helped unload a truck received from their employer, who was detained for interrogation, one shekel each. Another employer confessed that he
had given one boy only three shekels. Other children said that they get 3-5 shekels for unloading a truck.
[From the Israeli paper Kol Ha'ir, July 16. Translated by Geoff Hartman. Slightly abridged from Pegasus.]