BANGKOK: Israel says it has retrieved the body of a 35-year-old Thai hostage who was abducted into Gaza during the October 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war. Nattapong Pinta was among 31 Thais taken by the Hamas militant group. Thailand’s foreign ministry in a statement Saturday confirmed that Pinta, the last Thai hostage in Gaza, was confirmed dead. It said the bodies of two others have yet to be retrieved. The ministry has said 46 Thais have been killed during the war. Thais were the largest group of foreigners held captive by Hamas. They were among tens of thousands of Thai workers in Israel. Here’s a look at what they were doing.
Why are there so many Thais in Israel?
Israel once relied heavily on Palestinian workers, but it started bringing in large numbers of migrant workers after the 1987-93 Palestinian revolt, known as the first Intifada. Most came from Thailand, and Thais remain the largest group of foreign agricultural labourers in Israel today, earning considerably more than they can at home. Thailand and Israel implemented a bilateral agreement a decade ago to ease the way for workers in the agriculture sector. Israel has come under criticism for the conditions under which the Thai farm labourers work. A Human Rights Watch report in 2015 said they often were housed in makeshift and inadequate accommodation and “were paid salaries significantly below the legal minimum wage, forced to work long hours in excess of the legal maximum, subjected to unsafe working conditions and denied their right to change employers.” A watchdog group found more recently that most were still paid below the legal minimum wage.
How many Thai nationals work in Israel?
There were about 30,000 Thai workers, primarily working on farms, in Israel prior to the attack by Hamas. In the wake of the attack, some 7,000 returned home, primarily on government evacuation flights, but higher wages than those available at home have continued to attract new arrivals. The Thai ambassador to Israel, Pannabha Chandraramya, recently said there are now more than 38,000 Thai workers in the country. What happened after some left? Faced with a labour shortage in the wake of the exodus, Israel’s Agriculture Ministry announced incentives to try to attract foreign workers back to evacuated areas. Among other things, it offered to extend work visas and to pay bonuses of about USD 500 a month. Thailand’s Labor Ministry granted 3,966 Thai workers permission to work in Israel in 2024, keeping Israel in the top four destinations for Thais working abroad last year. Thai migrant workers generally come from poorer regions of the country, especially the northeast, and even before the bonuses, the jobs in Israel paid many times what they could make at home.