Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - A room cleaner named Ahmad. A dishwasher named Mohammad. And a man with a vacuum in the lobby of an Israeli beach hotel.
Israel and Jordan signed their peace treaty in 1994 — that is a generation ago — but it has often been a cold peace, without real people moving back and forth, without workers, wages or bosses.
Now Jordan and Israel have launched a pilot project that is so small and simultaneously so ambitious that it tells the story.
For the past six months, very quietly, Israel has been allowing Jordanians to cross the border to its Red Sea resort to work minimum-wage jobs at hotels.
The first 700 of 1,500 have started.
“The Jordanians need work, and we need workers,” said Shabtai Shay, the head of the Eilat Hotel Association.
Getting the Jordanians work permits to cross the border from Aqaba to Eilat took three years of negotiations with 10 Israeli ministries, he said.
“It was mission impossible,” Shay said.
On the Israeli side, there were concerns about security, vetting, the checkpoint, unions, the hours and how Israeli tourists would feel about being attended — even behind the scenes — by service workers who were Muslims from Jordan.
Jordan and Israel fought two wars, in 1948 and 1967. Their relations have been further strained by the fact that Jordan is filled with Palestinian refugees.
“I never thought I’d live to see the first Jordanian worker in our hotels,” Shay said.
The Israeli resort of Eilat is not exactly the French Riviera. There is a short strip of beach with a touristy promenade of duty-free outlets, chain restaurants and swimming in the Red Sea.
During the intense heat and humidity of July and August, it is packed with holidaying Israeli families. To the east is Jordan and to the west is Egypt. In the distant haze is Saudi Arabia. Few Israelis venture to those destinations.
There are 55,000 Israelis living in Eilat and 40 hotels with 12,000 rooms that employ 9,000 workers, about a third of them in housekeeping — jobs Israelis won’t do any more, or won’t do for the money offered.
A dozen Jordanian hotel workers interviewed by The Washington Post said they were either happy with their new jobs in Eilat — or as happy as someone who changes dirty sheets in a foreign country can be.
“It has made my life,” said Ahmad Riashi, 25, who washes dishes at Isrotel’s Royal Garden Hotel.
He previously worked as a waiter at a five-star hotel in Amman, the capital of Jordan.
He estimates his wages have doubled in Israel. He is saving; he feels he is going somewhere.
“I was surprised, in a good way, when I arrived here,” Riashi said.
He said Jewish Israelis are surprised, too, to see a Jordanian, then want to take a selfie together.
“We haven’t had a single complaint from customers,” said Etty Krichly, recruitment manager for Isrotel, which employs about 170 Jordanians.
The Jordanian hotel workers cross the border into Israel at six in the morning but must return to Jordan by eight every evening. They sleep in Jordan in a company dormitory. They are not allowed to travel outside the Eilat city limits, nor can they change employers without getting new permits. The Jordanians are only allowed to work as cleaners, not cooks, waiters or bartenders.
The Jordanian hotel employees are allowed to enter Israel with only the clothes on their backs — and one opened pack of cigarettes, because the Israelis do not want them to smuggle cigarettes, which are cheaper in Jordan than Israel.
Ahmad Salahat, 25, who cleans rooms at Dan Eilat Hotel, a posh place on the beachfront, said the hours and the wages were not as high as he had hoped but nobody was cheating him.
“They have treated us very well,” he said of his Israeli employers.
One Jordanian worker professed love for his human resources manager, who doles out candies and hugs.
Another employee wanted to learn Hebrew and migrate to Israel. One complained about the two-hour commute across the border on a bad day.
Jordan and Israel may be at peace, but when Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Jordan’s King Abdullah II, the trips are not covered by the media in either country until after the fact.
On social media, some Jordanians have criticised their fellow citizens for working for the Israelis, while some Israelis have worried about opening the turnstiles to terrorists.
The employees said they cared less about politics and more about wages.
“In Jordan there’s work, but the pay isn’t so hot, so here I am,” said Eman Saleem, 33, who worked in Jordan as a nurse’s aide and a flight attendant.
“I do this for me,” she said. “For my life.”
Saleem washes dishes and on her day off comes to pick up her paycheck in ripped jeans and designer sunglasses.
Asked if she was harassed in Jordan for working for Zionists in Israel, she said no. “My friends are open-minded,” Saleem said.
These room cleaners, pool scrubbers and floor sweepers — they are 99 per cent men — are first vetted by a Jordanian employment agency, then Jordan’s General Intelligence Directorate, then interviewed by the Israeli hotels and scrutinised all over again by Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency.
One worker who spoke briefly with The Washington Post was interrogated by Jordanian security agents upon return because of the contact with foreign reporters.
The hotel workers make minimum wage about $1,200 (Dh4,407) a month. After they pay commissions to their recruitment agency, room and board in Jordan, transportation, plus taxes, they take home about $700 to $800 a month.
Once upon a time, Israelis fresh out of the military might have worked as maids in Eilat for six months before setting off to college or travel or better jobs.
No more.
Palestinians are not allowed to work in Eilat hotels.
For several years, the Israeli government allowed the hotels in Eilat to import foreign workers — from Nepal, Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Those programmes were ended.
Then the hotels were staffed by African migrants fleeing war and poverty in Sudan and Eritrea. Israel built a new fence in the Sinai to stop the illegal immigration and now is pushing the Africans out of the country.
For every Jordanian the hotels hire, the Israeli government insists they fire one of the Africans.
The hotel managers, and the Jordan workers themselves, know that one violent incident, a stabbing, an assault, could shut down the programme.
Magi Malul, a human resources manager for Isrotel, works closely with the Jordanian workers. “I love them, I really do,” she said.
Malul speaks Arabic, which she learnt from her grandmother, a Jewish immigrant from Morocco who migrated to Israel.
*Gulf News
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