A leading construction industry representative called on the government to urgently overhaul Israel’s foreign worker intake system after State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman issued a scathing report on the failure to bring in enough laborers for the sector, a shortfall that the report said caused billions of shekels in economic damage and delayed housing projects.
Eldad Nitzan, chairman of the Foreign Manpower Companies Union in the real estate and construction sector, appealed on Sunday to the housing minister, finance minister, and director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office to change the operating model used by the Population and Immigration Authority and allow tens of thousands more foreign workers to enter Israel through private manpower corporations.
Post-October 7 labor crisis
The appeal followed Englman’s report on the state’s handling of the labor crisis in construction after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, when the entry of large numbers of Palestinian workers into Israel was halted.
According to the report, the failure to bring in 100,000 foreign workers stemmed from bureaucratic delays, poor coordination among government bodies, and delays in screening workers abroad. The result, according to the comptroller, was severe economic harm and months-long delays in the delivery of new housing units.
The report also described what it called a broader operational breakdown inside the Interior Ministry and the Population and Immigration Authority, which oversees the entry and regulation of foreign workers. According to the findings cited in Nitzan’s appeal, bureaucratic barriers left thousands of construction sites short of manpower during one of the most sensitive periods the sector has faced in years.
Nitzan argued that the state had failed to prepare in advance for the possibility that Palestinian labor would need to be replaced, despite long-standing warnings about the construction sector’s dependence on those workers. He said that even after the government decided to expand the use of foreign labor, the system remained too slow and too rigid to respond.
Construction companies have inadequate staffing and resources
In his appeal, Nitzan said the construction branch of the Population and Immigration Authority had been forced to handle more than 200 corporations after the war, compared with 48 beforehand, without adequate staffing or resources. He said 53,000 foreign workers had been brought to Israel within a year, including 45,000 through the private route, but argued that senior officials failed to make the professional adjustments needed to meet the full scale of demand.
He also called for a review of decisions made in the two years before the war, including why the state relied heavily on workers from China and Moldova rather than widening the pool of source countries. According to the appeal, the issue became more acute once China stopped cooperating on the arrival of additional workers after the war broke out.
Nitzan urged the Finance Ministry to help establish what he described as a modern operational framework that would allow up to 100,000 foreign workers to enter the construction sector through the private track, using 220 manpower corporations established after the outbreak of the war.
He said such a move was necessary to restore construction activity to pre-war levels and prevent further damage to Israel’s housing market and broader economy.