Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Israeli Deputy Minister Ayyub Kara says 1,500 Jordanian laborers are to work in the southernmost port city of Eilat in the occupied Palestinian territories under an agreement between Israel and Jordan earlier this month.

On Friday, Kara said the accord reached last week workers would be brought in from the nearby Jordanian city of Aqaba for labor in the occupied Palestinian lands.

The agreement is expected to be followed by additional projects, among them the construction of new border posts between Israel and Jordan, and the creation of a joint industrial zone in the Jordan Valley.

Kara said that Israel plans to hire Jordanian and Palestinian workers to replace other foreign laborers, who make up around nine percent of the workforce in Israel.

According to the human rights organization B'Tselem, the continued Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories has gravely damaged the prospect of an independent Palestinian economy and driven tens of thousands of Palestinians to seek work in Israel.

Also on January 29, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the economy of the blockaded Gaza Strip and that of the occupied West Bank contracted in the wake of the Israeli war against the enclave last summer.

“Economic activity contracted in 2014, following the war in Gaza in the summer and mounting political tensions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (al-Quds),” the IMF said.

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children, were killed in the Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip that started in early July 2014 and ended in late August that year. Over 11,100 others, including 3,374 children, 2,088 women and 410 elderly people, were also injured.

*Press TV