The Erez checkpoint, separating the Gaza Strip from Israel proper, appeared deserted.
A few bored soldiers stood by the road’s entry lanes, normally busy but nearly empty for the past two weeks following a government decision to seal off the administered territories and ban Palestinian laborers from reaching jobs in Israel.
Every now and then, a car approached the checkpoint from inside the Strip, carrying a few thankful workers who held coveted special entry passes into Israel.
Periodically, a disappointed Arab was forced back home. The soldiers looked at the papers and said: “It won’t do. You can’t enter.”
The general closure of the territories, now in its third week, has continued to be successful in its goal of ending the wave of violence that engulfed Israel last month.
But it has become more and more painful economically for both Palestinian workers and Israeli employers.
A group of Palestinian women, eager for work, tugged on an Israeli farmer on the Gaza side of the checkpoint.
Five women managed to get in his pickup truck, but five others were left out.
The government is killing us, the Israeli farmer said.
“We are losing tens of thousands of shekels. Our produce is left out in the fields with no one to pick it,” he said.
“Rabin must make up his mind. If he wants to continue the closure, then let us do away with agriculture. This can’t go on anymore,” the farmer added.
Inside the Strip, the Palestinian population, dependent on wages earned in Israel, was suffering from a cash shortage.
A few miles down the road from this checkpoint, scores of Palestinians gathered outside military-run administration offices, hoping to get a special permit to enter Israel.
LITTLE HOPE OF FINDING WORK
Local Gaza grocery stores were no longer willing to give credit, even to longtime customers. Palestinian families began cutting down on food.
The Palestinian laborers were standing outside the fence around the government offices, begging officers to let them inside and grant them work permits to enter Israel proper.
But there was little hope From the 110,000 workers who used to enter Israel daily from both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, only a few thousand permits have been issued for workers in agriculture and construction.
On Tuesday, for example, only 3,300 work permits were issued. Another 1,700 entry permits were given to those who needed medical treatment in Israel or who planned to travel abroad.
Israeli construction companies have submitted requests to allow more than 4,000 Palestinians to enter Israel to help the housing industry get out of the forced standstill. By Wednesday, the number of requests was expected to reach 10,000.
But for the time being, the authorities were strictly enforcing the closure, apparently determined to create a new economic reality and separate the territories from Israel, even if the costs are high.
The Cabinet decided this week to extend the closure “indefinitely,” reviewing the situation on a week-by-week basis.
But pressure on the government was mounting by midweek. Building contractors and the farmers were crying that they were on the verge of collapse and the army reported a “very difficult atmosphere” in the territories.
Although Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reiterated Tuesday that the people’s security was higher on his agenda than any other consideration, economists expected a gradual relaxation of the closure — with more and more permits granted daily.
IDLE MEN. ‘UNCONTROLLABLE RAGE’
But there appears to be no doubt here that a return to the situation that existed prior to the closure was out of the question.
Senior army officers estimated that even after the complete closure is lifted, only 70,000 workers would be permitted back, with 40,000 forced to find alternative jobs inside the territories.
The catch is that there are few such jobs in the territories.
Unemployment in the territories, even before the closure, reached the high rate of 18 percent. An additional 40,000 jobless Palestinians would bring unemployment in the territories to an impossible rate of over 30 percent.
Tuesday was a hot day in Gaza. Scores of unemployed young men crowded the beautiful beach and used their forced vacation to cool off in the calm Mediterranean.
Ma’amoun Khozendar, 39, a local businessman, was standing on a hill overlooking the beach, and said: “Look at the sea, it’s a treasure. You can develop a local harbor, build ships, make the sea turn around the entire Gaza economy.
“But if you stand idle — see all these young men? The closure will not calm them down. It will make them angrier than ever and make their rage uncontrollable.”
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