Thousands of Palestinians employed in Israel went on a one-day strike Aug. 21, in protest against a decision to pay their salaries into Palestinian bank accounts.

Generally, Palestinian workers, most of whom work for contruction companies, receive net salaries in cash. The construction companies are required to report to the Israel Population and Immigration Authority the number of days and hours each worker has labored, for his health care and pension charges to be calculated and paid for. Still, many workers have complained over the years that they did not get paid in full, or that the reports about their working hours were inaccurate. This system has another drawback as it forced employers to go around with huge sums of cash in order to pay their employees’ salaries.

In 2019, Bank of Israel published a study it conducted on the illegal trade in work permits for Palestinians. The study found that about 20,000 Palestinian workers — about 30% of the Palestinian workers employed in Israel at the time on a work permit — actually paid for it. The average price of a permit was 2,000 Israeli shekels ($610 per today's exchange rate) per month. 

Also in 2019, an interministerial committee was tasked with regulating wages and social rights of Palestinian workers. The committee found significant gaps between the rights that workers are entitled to according to Israeli law and their actual conditions. A report issued by the committee recommended to transfer the responsibility for all payments to Palestinian workers from the state — the Immigration Authority — to the employers themselves, so that the state would engage only in regulation and supervision, similar to the situation with Israeli workers. It also recommended prohibiting the payment of wages to workers in cash. Rather, the employers would have to issue paychecks to their Palestinian workers, as they do for Israeli workers.