Antonio Campenni, representative of the Italian Cobas (Comitati di base), accurately expressed the opinion of the delegates on one point, where there was no dissent: equal pay and equal rights would put an end to the competition among the wage earners. "Let the companies pay for their politics, rather than forcing the ‘migrants in their own country and from abroad’ into a competition of dumping." But how can an end to the competition be achieved under the conditions of high unemployment rates, a profoundly divided labor market and the politics of closure? To begin with, WAC’s answer to this question confronts on an obvious vacuum left by the Histadrut. The WAC started an organization offensive among Arab Israelis, accompanied by regular advisory meetings, shared cultural activities, education, and what belongs to the "core business" of unions: struggling for regular working conditions and wage agreements with the employers. In the course of the campaign "A Job to win", WAC’s organizers succeeded in concluding contracts with well-known Israeli construction companies. The latter committed themselves not only to employ more and more Arab Israelis, but also to apply the current wage agreements of the Histadrut on these contracts. About 500 workers, mainly Arab Israelis, could thus be placed, another 1,000 are registered at the WAC. A Sisyphean task, as Salah Athamneh commented on these efforts.
As important as this work is, it doesn’t bring about a perspective for the Palestinians and the migrants from other countries. The question, whether the problems migrants face in Israel were phenomena specific to Israel or whether they were developments comparable to those in Western European countries, was not answered. While some pointed out that the replacement of domestic labor by labor migrants and also the recent political course of resorting to Arab Israelis couldn’t be explained without considering the politically unsettled conflict between Israel and Palestine, others argued that the political patterns in reaction to the recession – the nation-state’s interest in reducing unemployment, that seems to know domestic labor only, and the nation-state’s interest in low wages which count as a prerequisite for competitiveness – weren’t too different from the struggles on immigration quotas in the EU member states. Only under specific political conditions were the employees competing with each other. But the debates on nationalist and respectively racist restricted labor market policies were to be found within the EU and within European unions as well. And at the time more and more domestic workers in these countries (as well as in Israel) faced the conditions, which were once only suffered by migrants. The unacceptable employment norms suffered by foreign workers were slowly becoming the standard for low wage earners in general.
The dilemma the WAC is located in therefore refers to a general question of union organizing: how to think of abolishing the competition without restricting oneself to a national framework and reacting with the corresponding claim for immigration restrictions similar to the "Closed Sky"?
Roni Ben Efrat pointed out that the answer to such a question was awaited not only within the Israeli and Palestinian left, but also within the European left. Since the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, a vicious circle could be observed whose recent consequences were the "security" fence and Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan. The prolongation of this vicious circle was, among other things, leading to that "in competing on the most victims" taboos were broken on the side of radical Palestinian movements like the Tanzim and the Hamas: Suicide attackers would no longer recoil from bombing the checkpoints and the people there trying to cross the border.
She criticized every solidarity movement that is based on supporting national interests: "The Palestine question seems to be disconnected from the Israeli society. This is too superficial".
Often in the international and German solidarity movement this perspective on the Israeli and Palestinian society and therefore on the causes of conflict is superficial, likewise it has been as regrettable not to be able to look more precisely into the connections between the exploitation of functionalized "migrants" within and outside Israel and the ‘boundaries’ within the Israeli society in the context of the journey. Neither does the Israeli society "homogenously" suffer from the consequences of the threat and the security politics, nor does the latter serve it as such. WAC’s call for the end of all forms of slave and forced labor and for equal pay for equal work therefore point to the limits of every national emancipation movement.