TEL AVIV, Israel, June 8 (UPI) -- Israel is planning to pull its plants out of a joint industrial zone with the Palestinians in the northern Gaza Strip.
Vice Prime Minister and Industry Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday he has decided to move because of the deteriorated security situation.
Some 100 plants, half the plants at the Erez industrial zone, are Israeli-owned and the other half are Palestinian. Together they employed some 4,000 Palestinians workers, offering higher wages than in Gaza.
However that zone, one of the last vestiges of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, has come under repeated Palestinian militant attacks and 11 Israelis have been killed so far.
Usually those attacks led to closures and the Chairman of the Israeli entrepreneurs at Erez, Yaakov Cohen, complained they have lost 70 work days, orders and "clients dumped us."
Olmert said his office is trying to move the plants to neighboring industrial zones inside Israel.
The move could help alleviate unemployment inside Israel, Cohen said.
