Indian workers in Israel pick daily drill of sirens, shelters over evacuation

He is among an estimated 15,000 Indian workers who arrived in Israel through government and private routes following a 2023 bilateral framework agreement.

“About 350 Indian workers have left and maybe 600 more have enrolled to go back to India. Thousands others are feeling quite safe mainly due to the system of phone alerts and sirens being deployed in Israel,” says Mohan Lal, 33. He described how, in the days following the June 13 attacks by Iran, they would have to rush several times in the day and night to the shelters, but now that was needed only once or twice a day.

The “miklat” he usually uses is one of the small concrete containers built near their workshop, which can accommodate up to a dozen people. He says that he recently visited the Ramat Gan area of Tel Aviv to see the damage caused to buildings by Iranian missile strikes, but added that there were no visible signs of damage in Palmachim where he worked.

In contrast to these single-room shelters, other Indian workers describe gigantic fortified public shelters which can accommodate up to 1,500 people and are located at every 500 feet in Tel Aviv.

Dharamvir Singh, 43, who belongs to Jind in Haryana, has been working as a ceramic tiler in Israel since a year. He has been using one equipped with air conditioners, lounge chairs, toilets and so on. He is working on the tiling of a 27-storey building in Tel Aviv — six of its storeys are designed to serve as underground bunkers.

“More and more, bigger and bigger bomb shelters are being built everywhere in Israel,” he says. “The difference I find from the earlier phase of attacks by Hamas and the current shower of ballistic missile attacks from Iran is that the alerts give us 20-25 minutes to reach the shelters instead of the earlier 10-15 minutes. We are getting more time to rush to safety.”

Gurdeep Chouhan, also from Jind, describes a similar experience of the need for rushing to shelters coming down after a peak two weeks ago. He is working in a well-known bakery, Angel’s, along with a large group of Indians in a place called Lod, 15 km from Tel Aviv. He says: “There is less danger in small places like where we are, which are on the outskirts of the large cities like Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem. It is in the big cities that the military establishments, refineries and multi-national companies are located and they could be the target of future attacks.”

Subhash Chand, a 33-year old carpenter from Punjab’s Hoshiyarpur, says the threat is not from precision bombing but debris from missiles intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome. He says there was panic among their families back home in Punjab because of old videos showing extensive damage to Tel Aviv.

“I have been in Israel for over a year and we are all liking it here. There are no jobs in India. If we take up the offer of the Indian government and return home we will surely regret it,” says Subhash Chand.

“Israeli companies and supervisors respect Indian workers. We feel safe because of the system of alerts and sirens. The phone alerts tell us when to go inside a shelter and let us know when it is safe to come out and go back to our shift duty.”

Most of the Indian construction workers The Indian Express spoke to reveal they were earning between `1.5 lakh-`2.5 lakh every month in Israel. “Even a collector does not earn so much in India. We are not planning to return now and will go on leave only for Diwali as decided earlier,” says Surendra Singh Saini, a driller who arrived in Israel from Jhunjunu, Rajasthan. He says they had got used to a daily drill of missile attacks and shrieking sirens as well as the “timeout” spent in protected spaces.

“When the missiles are intercepted, we look to the skies and hear the sounds of patakaas (fire crackers) going off. That’s all,” he says.

There are several Indian supervisors and managers working on large construction sites where hundreds of Indians are employed. They have taken it upon themselves to mentor and guide the workers through this dangerous phase.

Dharma Kachawa from Pushkar, Rajasthan arrived in Israel seven years ago is among the Indian supervisors. He says he has a WhatsApp group of 400 Indian workers, employed with the Israeli construction giant Solel Boneh and currently working in a town called Tzur-Yigal.

Kachawa, 35, says he does his best to keep Indian workers informed of any potential danger, in case they are unaware of missile attacks.

“The fact is that some ballistic missiles are going through and they do cause damage. So I keep asking each and every Indian worker about his well being. I ask them not to wait for the sirens and move towards safe shelters once the phone alerts come.”