Stay in Israel, or flee? Thai workers caught up in Hamas attack and war are faced with a dilemma

Thai workers who were evacuated from Israel arrive at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Samut Prakarn Province, Thailand, on Oct. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/File)
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Updated 03 November 2023
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Stay in Israel, or flee? Thai workers caught up in Hamas attack and war are faced with a dilemma

  • More than 7,000 Thais working in Israel have returned home on evacuation flights since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, but some 23,000 have decided to stay
  • At least 32 Thais have been reported killed, 23 are believed to have been abducted by Hamas, and many more may be missing

BANGKOK: When Hamas militants stormed into Israeli villages and towns along the border of the blockaded Gaza Strip last month, many Thai migrant agricultural workers shared the fate of hundreds of Israelis who were killed, kidnapped or forced to run for their lives.
Since that day nearly a month ago, more than 7,000 of some 30,000 Thais working in Israel have returned home on government evacuation flights. But many others have decided to stay, choosing to take the risk for the opportunity to earn wages far higher than at home.
Thailand reports that at least 23 Thais are believed to have been abducted by Hamas, which rules Gaza. It’s the largest single group of foreigners held by the militant group. Many more may be missing and 32 have been reported killed.
In a visceral illustration of the fate met by some, Israel’s UN envoy drew a rebuke from Thailand’s Foreign Ministry after showing the General Assembly a video last week of what he said was a Hamas fighter decapitating a Thai agricultural worker with a garden hoe as he lay on the ground.
“Such horrific brutality has stirred a sense of outrage not only among Thais, but undoubtedly people throughout the world,” the ministry said, criticizing the decision to show it as disrespectful to the victim and his family.
‘Please help my son stay safe’
Like many other Thai agricultural laborers in Israel, Natthaporn Onkeaw had been his family’s main breadwinner, sending money home regularly after going to Israel to work on a kibbutz in 2021.
The 26-year-old was among those abducted by Hamas, said his mother, 47-year-old Thongkun Onkeaw, who lives in a poor rural area in northeastern Thailand near the border with Laos.
He was one of the few Thai captives pictured in a photo released by Hamas whose names were later confirmed by the Thai Labor Ministry. His mother said she had not heard from him since he was taken, and no officials have given her or her husband any updates.
“I can only pray: Please help my son stay safe,” she told The Associated Press.
Thai media has followed developments in the conflict closely, with regular reports on the plights of the workers who have fled or chosen to stay, as well as what little is known about the hostages.
A video of one man, who was purported to be a Thai migrant worker being dragged away in a chokehold by a militant, has been widely circulated on social media. Identified as 26-year-old Kong Saleo by his wife, Suntree Saelee, he was allegedly taken from an avocado orchard when Hamas militants raided the worker’s camp.
“When I saw the picture and the clip, I knew it was him,” Suntree was quoted as saying in the Bangkok Post. “I am concerned for his safety. Please help him.”
Thai workers looking for higher wages
Farm laborers from Thailand and elsewhere in Southeast Asia seek work in more developed countries where there is a shortage of semi-skilled labor — at wages considerably higher than what they earn at home.
Israel started bringing in migrant workers in earnest after the first Intifada, the 1987-93 Palestinian revolt, after employers began to lose trust in Palestinian workers.
Most came from Thailand, and they remain the largest group of foreign agricultural laborers in Israel today. The countries implemented a bilateral agreement a decade ago specifically easing the way for Thai agricultural workers. Many Palestinian workers had since returned, and before the Hamas attack about half of Israel’s workforce was made up of foreign and Palestinian laborers.
In recent years, Israel has come under criticism over the conditions in which the Thai farm laborers work. Human Rights Watch, in a 2015 report, said they often were housed in makeshift and inadequate accommodations 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.
To attract foreign workers back to evacuated areas, Israel’s Agriculture Ministry has said it will extend their work visas and give them bonuses of about $500 a month. The offer is tempting, compared to the approximately $1,800 lump sum Thailand’s government has made available to aid Thais fleeing Israel.
Beyond the official offers, Thailand’s government has warned that scammers have been messaging family members claiming to be looking to pay back wages or benefits, only to collect personal information and trick them into transferring money.
When the Israeli chicken farm where Sompong Jandai had been working since July was rocked with explosions in the early days of the Israel-Hamas war — sparked by Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel — the 31-year-old first thought about going home.
But two things changed his mind: the salary he makes — more than eight times what he’d earn in Thailand — and knowing he can send the bulk of it home to support his wife and four children and pay off loans he took to finance the move to Israel.
“At first I thought about leaving,” he said. After being initially evacuated to a safer area, he came back to work at the farm.
Thailand’s efforts to get help
Thailand’s Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin pressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a telephone conversation Wednesday for help with Thais hostages.
Srettha has also been urging workers to come home, and wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday that the conflict is likely to expand.
“I would like to emphasize that the safety of our people is the most important thing,” he wrote. “Please return to our home.”
A Thai parliamentary delegation last week traveled to Iran, a Hamas ally, to meet with a Hamas representative and approach the issue from the other side.
Areepen Uttarasin, a Thai official who led the delegation, told reporters that the Hamas representative said the group would “try every possible way for all Thais held captive to return safely.” He did not identify the Hamas representative but said that he was told any releases had had been complicated by ongoing fighting.
In Israel, Yahel Kurlander, a volunteer who has been helping Thai workers in the aftermath of the attack, said she knows of at least 54 missing or kidnapped Thais. She said many bodies haven’t been identified yet.
Hours after the Hamas attack, Kurlander, a sociologist with Israel’s Tel-Hai College who specializes in agricultural labor migration with a focus on Thai workers, said she and other scholars and members of nongovernmental organizations started talking about what they could do to help.
“We just came to this realization,” she said. “If we won’t gather together and reach a hand to the Thai workers, nobody will.”
The first priority was to evacuate “highly traumatized” workers and provide food and other aid, she said. Now they’re reaching out to families of the missing, trying to gather details about tattoos or other identifying marks, and also help those who fled the Hamas rampage to return home or find new work. It’s important, she said, to give the workers “the freedom of choice.”
For Siroj Pongbut, that choice was to return home — at least until the fighting ends — even though he doesn’t make enough farming in Thailand to feed his wife and three children. The 27-year-old had been working as a farmhand in Israel for less than a month after more than a year of bureaucracy and borrowing money for the trip.
From that Saturday morning when Hamas attacked, he said he could hear sirens and explosions from the tomato farm where he worked. He made up his mind it wasn’t worth the risk to stay; about 150 of his coworkers at the farm stayed in Israel.
“I don’t know how it is going to be in the future,” he said by telephone while awaiting an evacuation flight from Tel Aviv last week. “I’m worried that it will become more serious.”


Children found malnourished in Greek migrant camp

Updated 44 min 8 sec ago
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Children found malnourished in Greek migrant camp

  • MSF doctors diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and six years with acute malnutrition
  • EU-funded Samos camp, a sprawling, heavily-surveilled facility surrounded by barbed wire, was opened by the government in 2021

ATHENS: Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Monday it had identified the first cases of malnourished children in a migrant camp on the Greek island of Samos, which has been criticized by rights groups for dangerous living conditions.
MSF doctors have diagnosed six children from Syria and Afghanistan aged between six months and six years with acute malnutrition needing immediate help, it said.
While it could not say if their malnutrition was due to living in the camp, conditions there — including insufficient food and medical care — endangered their health, MSF said.
“No child should suffer from malnutrition due to systemic neglect,” said Christina Psarra, director general of MSF Greece, calling for immediate action and adding that about a quarter of the camp’s residents were children.
The Greek migration ministry said the cases were isolated.
“Under no circumstances is there generalized malnutrition due to living conditions,” the ministry said, adding that asylum-seekers were provided with three meals a day.
On the forefront of Europe’s 2015-16 migration crisis, Greece saw a surge in arrivals in 2024, according to UN data. This year, nearly a third of arrivals to southern Europe from the Middle East and Africa were to Greece.
The EU-funded Samos camp, a sprawling, heavily-surveilled facility surrounded by barbed wire, was opened by the government in 2021 to replace the former camp of Vathy — once an overcrowded, rat-infested tent city of 7,000 people.
The six malnourished children arrived this year, MSF said.
Rights group Amnesty International has called conditions at Samos “inhumane and degrading” during periods of overcrowding, with water shortages and a lack of other basic services.
In December, a UN human rights expert accused Greece of failing to identify victims of sex trafficking in the camp.
MSF called on Greece and the EU to ensure adequate pediatric care and nutritional support in Samos and to restore financial support to asylum seekers suspended last June.


Thousands of Bangladeshi students join global strike in solidarity with Gaza

Updated 07 April 2025
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Thousands of Bangladeshi students join global strike in solidarity with Gaza

  • Student leaders call for more action from international community, Bangladeshi government
  • Protest comes in wake of Israel’s new massacres, after unilaterally breaking Gaza ceasefire 

DHAKA: Thousands of Bangladeshi students took to the streets of Dhaka on Monday to call for an end to Israel’s war on Gaza, joining a global strike in solidarity with Palestine. 

The student protesters skipped classes and rallied in different parts of the capital throughout the day, with the biggest crowd gathering at Dhaka University, Bangladesh’s largest and oldest tertiary institution.

“We are observing today’s strike as part of a global solidarity call with the people of Palestine,” Mostafa Mushfiq, an anthropology student at Dhaka University, told Arab News. 

“We want to demonstrate to everyone that all students and people from different professions and classes are united against the mass killing in Gaza.”

The call for a global strike for Gaza comes after Israel unilaterally broke the ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian group Hamas on March 18, launching a wave of deadly airstrikes that have since killed more than 1,300 people. 

Gaza’s Health Ministry estimates that at least 50,752 Palestinians have been confirmed dead and 115,475 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 2023. The real toll is likely to be much higher as thousands of people are missing under the rubble.

Monday’s strike and protests were joined by students from various universities across Bangladesh, many with the support of their lecturers and college administrators. 

“Our protests and struggles will continue … We are feeling a new spirit now. Our teachers are completely on our side in this movement,” Mushfiq said. 

Bangladeshi students have previously led other rallies in solidarity with Palestine, demanding more action from the international community to stop Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza.

“As a Bangladeshi, as a Muslim, it is my duty to be here to tell the world what is really going on, to let the Gaza people know that we are here, we hear them, we are praying for them,” Arafat Hossain Siam, a student from the Shanto-Mariam University in Dhaka, told Arab News.

“Don’t lose hope. Allah is watching. God willing, they will be free.”

The students were joined by ordinary Bangladeshis as they waved Palestinian flags, carried posters and chanted slogans in solidarity with Gaza. Some demanded that the Bangladeshi government do more. 

“We demand a strong stance from the Bangladeshi government on the issue of ongoing mass killing in Gaza,” Tahmid Hossain, a master’s student in Dhaka University, told Arab News. 

“The Palestinians are being suppressed for a long time. For around 100 years, we have noticed that day by day, aggression continues on the Palestinian land and their land is occupied by the Israelis … The Israeli attack on Gaza people, which began over a year ago, has crossed all the limits now.” 


King Charles III arrives in Rome on state visit, first overseas trip since brief hospitalization

Updated 07 April 2025
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King Charles III arrives in Rome on state visit, first overseas trip since brief hospitalization

  • Charles is traveling with Queen Camilla on the three-day visit, which includes the first address to the Italian Parliament of a British monarch
  • A planned meeting with Pope Francis was postponed by mutual agreement due to the pope’s bout with double pneumonia

ROME: King Charles III arrived in Rome on Monday for a state visit to Italy on his first overseas trip since being briefly hospitalized for side effects of cancer treatment.
Charles is traveling with Queen Camilla on the three-day visit, which includes the first address to the Italian Parliament of a British monarch, visits with the Italian president and premier and a side trip to Ravenna to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Adriatic city’s liberation by Allied forces.
A planned meeting with Pope Francis was postponed by mutual agreement due to the pope’s bout with double pneumonia. The 88-year-old pontiff returned to the Vatican two weeks ago, and made a surprise appearance to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday.
Charles, 76, was briefly hospitalized March 27 due to “temporary side effects” from treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer diagnosed more than a year ago. The king appeared the next day, waving to well-wishers in central London, and has since resumed scheduled engagements.
In Rome, Charles will highlight the close links between Britain and Italy, two NATO allies, at a time when European nations are working to bolster support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression. The visit will include a joint flyover of Rome’s historic center by the Italian Air Force aerobatic team, Frecce Tricolori, or Tricolor Arrows, and their Royal Air Force counterparts, the Red Arrows.
The king and queen will attend a reception in Ravenna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, to mark the 80th anniversary of the region’s liberation from the Nazis by Allied forces on April 10, 1945. The royals will also celebrate the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region and meet with local farmers whose fields were devastated by floods that recently hit the area.


Thousands of Afghans depart Pakistan under repatriation pressure

Updated 07 April 2025
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Thousands of Afghans depart Pakistan under repatriation pressure

  • Thousands of Afghans have crossed the border from Pakistan in recent days as Islamabad ramped up pressure for them to return to Afghanistan
  • Families with their belongings in tow lined up at the key border crossings of Torkham in the north and Spin Boldak in the south

SPIN BOLDAK, Afghanistan: Thousands of Afghans have crossed the border from Pakistan in recent days, the United Nations and Taliban officials said, as Islamabad ramped up pressure for them to return to Afghanistan.
Pakistan last month set an early April deadline for some 800,000 Afghans carrying Afghan Citizen Cards (ACC) issued by Pakistan authorities to leave the country, another phase in Islamabad’s campaign in recent years to repatriate Afghans.
Families with their belongings in tow lined up at the key border crossings of Torkham in the north and Spin Boldak in the south, recalling similar scenes in 2023 when tens of thousands of Afghans fled deportation threats in Pakistan.
“In the last 2 days, 8,025 undocumented & ACC holders returned via Torkham & Spin Boldak crossings,” the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a post on social media platform X on Monday.
“IOM stands ready to scale up its response at key border points with forced returns expected to surge in the coming days,” it said.
Taliban officials also said thousands of people had crossed the border, but at lower rates than the IOM reported.
Refugee ministry spokesman Abdul Mutalib Haqqani told AFP that 6,000-7,000 Afghans had returned since the start of April, saying “more than a million Afghans might return.”
“We are urging Pakistan authorities not to deport them (Afghans) forcefully — there should be a proper mechanism with an agreement between both countries, and they must be returned with dignity,” he said.
Fleeing successive conflicts
The UN says nearly three million Afghans live in Pakistan, many having lived there for decades after fleeing successive conflicts in their country and after the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul in 2021.
“We were forced to return. Two days ago I was stopped and asked for documentation when they were searching houses,” 38-year-old Abdul Rahman told AFP after passing the Spin Boldak crossing with his family from Quetta, in Pakistan’s southwest, where they lived for six years.
“They didn’t even gave me an hour (to leave), I sold a carpet and my phone to make some money to come here, all my other belongings we left behind,” he said.
Human rights activists have been reporting for months the harassment and extortion of Afghans in Pakistan, a country mired in political and economic chaos.
More than 1.3 million Afghans who hold Proof of Registration cards from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, have also been told to move outside the capital Islamabad and the neighboring city of Rawalpindi.
Human Rights Watch has slammed “abusive tactics” used to pressure Afghans to return to their country, “where they risk persecution by the Taliban and face dire economic conditions.”
Ties between the neighboring countries have frayed since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.
Islamabad has accused Kabul’s rulers of failing to root out militants sheltering on its soil, a charge that the Taliban government denies, as Pakistan has seen a sharp rise in violence in border regions with Afghanistan.


Ex-detainees at UK asylum center bring claim against govt

Updated 07 April 2025
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Ex-detainees at UK asylum center bring claim against govt

  • Inspector was ‘rendered speechless’ after seeing conditions at Manston site
  • Syrian woman suffered miscarriage, Sudanese man allowed to shower once in 33 days

LONDON: At least 250 asylum-seekers detained at a UK facility are suing the government for unlawful detention after it emerged that the site was dangerously overcrowded and faced infectious disease outbreaks.

Manston asylum center in Kent, used by the Home Office to process people who had crossed the English Channel on small boats, was once described by a union official as a “humanitarian crisis on British soil,” The Guardian reported on Monday.

David Neal, the former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, said he was “rendered speechless” after seeing conditions at Manston.

Andy Baxter, a senior official at the Prison Officers’ Association, also condemned conditions at the site after being warned by union members working there.

He described Manston as closely resembling a refugee camp in an unstable country after visiting the site, which he said was “in crisis.”

Marquees that were intended to be used for hours upon the arrival of asylum-seekers had been used for more than a month, despite the Home Office planning to relocate arrivals to more permanent accommodation. People slept on the ground using pieces of cardboard, he added.

Manston also faced diphtheria and scabies outbreaks, with one man dying after contracting the former, a rarity in the UK due to vaccination. Kent Police also investigated claims that guards at the facility had assaulted asylum-seekers.

One of the claimants against the government, a 19-year-old Sudanese national, was detained at the site for 33 days, and his past experience of being tortured and trafficked was never recorded by officials at Manston.

While at the facility, he was “often hungry” and was allowed one shower during the 33-day period.

He was also denied a change of clothes, and was told by officials to “go back to your country.”

A 17-year-old Kurd from Iraq, detained for 12 days, had his birth date recorded as five years older than his real age, despite telling officials he was a child.

A Syrian woman who arrived in the UK with her husband and five children outlined the troubling details of her ordeal in the claim.

Her husband was removed to a separate immigration center after complaining about conditions at Manston, yet she was not informed about his whereabouts and feared he had been deported.

The woman and her children spent 11 days in a freezing, dirty tent, and were only permitted to leave to go to the toilet.

Her children contracted a stomach bug that was circulating at the site, and she had nowhere to wash their vomit-stained clothes.

She later discovered that she was pregnant after suffering morning sickness, and was unable to access medical care in Manston.

After being released and seeking treatment, she discovered that she had suffered a miscarriage.

She has now reunited with her husband together with their children, but said the experience at Manston continues to affect the family.

Emily Soothill of law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn, who is representing some of the claimants, said: “We consider that our clients were falsely imprisoned and that the conditions in Manston were such that their human rights were breached.

“People seeking asylum are more vulnerable to physical and mental illness; they have the right to be treated with dignity and should not be detained in this way.”