When Taha Amin-Ismail Khalifeh dialled into a conference call with his Israeli employer last month, the Palestinian hotel worker expected a briefing on how the Israel-Hamas war was affecting business.
Instead, he and 40 others were laid off. Khalifeh, who lives in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, had worked as a housekeeper in the hotel in East Jerusalem for more than 20 years.
About 160,000 Palestinians from the West Bank who were working in Israel and in Jewish settlements have lost or are at risk of losing their jobs because of the closure of border crossings from the West Bank into Israel and settlements, and restrictions on their access to Israel's job market, according to the United Nations' International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Israel has also sent back thousands of Palestinians to the besieged Gaza Strip as Israeli businesses urge the government to plug the labour gap from nations, including India and Sri Lanka.
Israeli farms, buildings sites and hotels are among the sectors struggling with a shortage of workers since the war erupted, and some foreign migrant labourers have left, fearing for their safety.
The Israel Builders Association (ACB) has asked the government to seek to recruit at least 60,000 foreign labourers to fill the gap left by the Palestinians, deputy director-general Shay Pauznersaid.
Sri Lanka, desperate for dollars and remittances, plans to send 10,000 workers for the Israeli construction industry, part of a wider contingent of 20,000 workers, including farm labourers, a government minister told Reuters last month.
The long-term loss of Israeli jobs would deal another blow to the fragile Palestinian economy, which is dependent on foreign aid and vulnerable to Israeli travel restrictions in the West Bank.
According to the ILO, the Palestinian job losses since the start of the war equate to a daily income loss of US$16 million.
For low-paid workers, the loss of income is already causing financial pain.
Construction worker Muthana Jamal Hassan, 33, who lives in the West Bank city of Jenin, had just finished a painting job in Tel Aviv when the war broke out.
He earned 140 shekels a
week and was his family's main breadwinner, but has had no income since the war began, and will soon be forced to get into debt to cover his family's basic needs.
Because of the border closures, he says, he cannot safely cross the border and fears being shot at or detained by Israeli security forces if he tries to do so.
"We used to work to eat and drink, not to buy villas and cars," he said by phone from his home.
"We were living in a certain way and now it was taken away from us overnight."
About 110,000 foreign migrant workers from countries, including Thailand and the Philippines, work legally in Israel. Some were among the 1,200 civilians killed by Hamas militants on Oct 7, according to Israeli tallies.
India agreed in May to send construction workers and caregivers to Israel, but it was "unaware of any specific figure or request" from Israel since the conflict with Hamas erupted.
Israeli efforts to recruit foreign workers to replace Palestinians have drawn criticism from trade unionists in India, with the Construction Workers Federation of India calling the push "immoral", pointing to the death toll in Israel's bombardment and ground invasion of Gaza.
Palestinian health authorities deemed reliable by the UN say more than 15,000 Gazans have been confirmed killed.
Israeli migrant rights labour group Kav LaOved said the mass recruitment of foreign workers at short notice during wartime might threaten their rights.
"They want to bring in so many people without being prepared," said spokesman Assia Ladizhinskaya.
"We need Israel to enforce (workers') rights to check if they're being recruited normally, if the employer can communicate with them with translators, and do checks in the fields and the construction sites to see if the workers are being treated well."
The group has been helping dozens of workers recover unpaid wages by contacting their employers, and has urged the Israeli government to let laid-off Palestinians withdraw funds from their pensions to help them cope with the earnings loss.
* The writers are from Reuters news agency