BETHLEHEM, West Bank — At 7 a.m., half a dozen cars carrying Palestinian laborers wait outside the yellow metal gate of the Har Gilo settlement, located on a hilltop in the occupied West Bank.

After queuing for 30 minutes while a long line of cars hurriedly leaves for work and school, dozens of workers in faded clothes slowly get out of their cars, line up and hand their work permits to security guards before making their way to a construction site. Home to some 500 Jewish settlers, almost all the stone houses in Har Gilo have been built by Palestinian laborers. 

“I am broken inside,” Waleed Obeidat, one of the workers, tells Al-Monitor. “The settlements are built on our land and at the expense of our rights.”

Jewish settlements and businesses, built on territory Israel occupied in the Six-Day War in 1967, are illegal under international law and deemed an obstacle to peace. The issue made headlines last month when Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson resigned from her position with Oxfam after the charity criticized her for endorsing SodaStream, an Israeli company whose main factory is located in a settlement in the West Bank.