India and Israel plan 50,000 workers by 2030 — the labour deal, explained
A bilateral framework is set to raise the number of Indian workers in Israel toward 50,000 by 2030, filling construction and caregiving jobs left by barred Palestinian labour. The numbers, and the controversy.
India and Israel have moved to make India one of the main suppliers of labour to the Israeli economy, with plans to raise the number of Indian workers toward 50,000 over five years.
The groundwork was laid before the war. The two governments initiated a Framework Agreement on temporary employment in May 2023, during a visit to Delhi by Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen, formalising it as a government-to-government arrangement that November. It covered tens of thousands of workers in two sectors above all: construction and caregiving.
The Gaza war turned a plan into a rush. After October 2023, Israel revoked the work permits of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and looked to India to fill the gap — running recruitment drives for 10,000 construction workers and 5,000 caregivers at a time. By mid-2025, at least 20,000 Indian workers had arrived since the war began.
It is not uncontroversial. Rights groups have questioned the ethics of sending Indian workers to replace Palestinian labour in a war economy; New Delhi points to legal contracts and safety protocols. The human side of the story — the Keralite caregivers who form India's oldest presence in Israel — is told in India's caregivers in Israel. These workers are entirely separate from the roughly 85,000 Indian-origin Jews who make Israel their home.
