The state has filed just 90 indictments in the 379 cases of work-related deaths in Israel in the last five years, with offenders often receiving mild punishments
Muatasem Abbasi and Khalaf Huwarin, two construction workers, left home for work but never returned. Both of them were killed in horrific accidents – Abbasi was hit by a concrete container that detached from a crane, and Khalaf was crushed when a wall collapsed on him – leaving behind emotionally and financially devastated families.
Unlike most work related accidents in Israel, these two cases lead to criminal indictments - the managers of the two construction sites were charged with negligent homicide. However due to "evidentiary difficulties," both signed very lenient plea bargens.
The families of the victims, who at the begining of the proceeding were hoping for justice for their loved ones, are now tired of waiting. Huwarin’s widow has been waiting for almost three years for monetary compensation from the National Insurance Institute.
Between 2017 and April 2022, state prosecutors filed 46 indictments in cases of negligent homicide in work-related accidents, as well as 44 indictments for negligent harm. However, according to Safe Work Israel, a group campaigning against industrial and construction accidents, 379 people died in various work-related accidents during these years.
In a discussion on these indictments at a Knesset subcommittee on work safety, Deputy State Prosecutor Shlomo Lemberger said: “In our experience, these are complicated cases due to the difficulty in proving the facts and the need to prove negligence as a causal link to the death.”
Huwarin, a resident of the West Bank town of Dahariya, was 28 when he was killed. In December 2019, he was working at a construction site of Keren Industries, which was hired to build a sports hall in the village of Bnei Dekalim in the south of Israel. The construction team was building two walls. One of them was 11.5 feet tall and, according to the original indictment, it had been built without the right specifications at the discretion of the workers. During construction the wall collapsed on Huwarin, crushing him to death.
Mamdouh al-Karinawi, the site manager, was charged with negligent homicide, since he had told workers to build the wall without consulting an expert. He did not oversee the work and was not on site when the accident happened - allowing Huwarin to work near the unstable wall.
The charge sheet says it was unclear exactly why the wall collapsed, but the answer was provided by al-Karinawi’s lawyer, Noam Alyagon. “When the plaintiffs say they don’t know the exact reason for the wall’s collapse, they ignore the evidence,” said Alyagon in response to the charges made in June 2021. He said that the wall collapsed after one of the workers apparently struck it while driving a tractor. The driver was a Palestinian worker, which means he was not permitted to operate heavy equipment in Israel.
Alyagon added that the family of said worker paid compensation to Huwarin’s family. “At first, the driver denied it, but then he took responsibility and said that he’d knocked the wall down. The plaintiff is playing innocent and misleading the court,” said the attorney. The judge noted that in light of the attorney’s findings, a mediation process was probably in order.
Three suspects were arrested right after the accident, two workers and al-Karinawi, the work manager. After three days of questioning the two workers were released as al-Karinawi became the main suspect. In a memorandum written by police superintendent Keren Toledano, from the unit responsible for investigating work-related accidents (established as part of the Lahav 433 police unit investigating serious crimes), she noted that state prosecutors had told her to release the suspects since the site manager bore the responsibility, not the workers.
Currently, most of the responsibility for safety and performance at construction sites lies with the site manager. Thus, in most cases, he is the one investigated and prosecuted in work-related accidents, along with workers who are directly involved. Other people with administrative responsibility, such as the project developers, are not held responsible. Rules meant to expand the circle of responsibility for safety have been under preparation for a long time at the ministries of labor and justice.
During the evidentiary phase of the trial over Huwarin’s death, the tractor driver admitted that he had no driving license. At first, he said he didn’t remember hitting the wall, but attorney Alyagon played a recording of the driver’s conversation with the manager after the accident, in which he says that a pillar had hit the victim after the tractor had hit the pillar, causing it to collapse. The judge later told prosecutors that as long as they didn’t have an expert opinion stating that the wall would not have fallen had it been built properly, it would be best to reach a settlement with the defense.
The original indictment included 46 prosecution witnesses and 22 findings of fact. The amended charge sheet contained only 11 findings of fact, with the manager now accused of “employing a worker without providing him with information,” a transgression carrying a maximum of six months in prison. The circumstances of Huwarin’s death were not mentioned in the new indictment, and all that was noted was that al-Karinawi had not provided Huwarin with updated information regarding anticipated dangers during his shift. The issue of negligent construction of the wall was also not on the amended indictment, and neither was the tractor.
Huwarin’s father Talal told Haaretz that he now lives with his son’s widow and his three children, ages 3 to 6. “The family is struggling to survive,” he says. “Khalaf was the only provider. His children and I depended on him, and he’s gone. I believe in fate, but I also want to believe that someone will bring justice. My son worked the right way; he had a permit to work in Israel. He didn’t have big dreams, he lived in a kind of warehouse. He wanted to save some money and start building a house, but even that dream will not be fulfilled. Everything turned around in a split second.”
The father’s and widow’s distress is amplified by the fact that the National Insurance Institute has not paid the family any compensation to this day. It claims that they have no documentation showing that Khalaf was hurt while at work. “The NII has not received any police report, no report from the Ministry of Economy or any confirmation by the employer indicating where the deceased was supposed to be working at the time of the accident,” wrote the institute in response to a petition filed by the family to a labor court.
In response, the attorney representing the family, Anan Balan, wrote the court, saying that “the NII has all the tools, means and investigators required to provide it with the truth, including any information it needs.”
Muatasem Abbasi was from East Jerusalem. In February 2018, he was working at a construction site in Ashkelon, belonging to Dona Engineering and Construction. He picked up the job while on break from his medical studies in Turkey. He and other workers in Ashkelon were pouring concrete on a balcony in one of the buildings on the site, using a container lifted by a crane. After finishing the job, Abbasi started to clean the container, removing remaining bits of concrete. He pulled and released the container’s handle for releasing concrete while it was in the air when it broke loose and critically injured him. He died in the hospital three days later.
A preliminary investigation showed that the four hooks attached to the container were faulty. On three of them there was no device for ensuring an automatic closure of the locks holding the container. It was also discovered that the manager, Arkady Bar, was absent at the time of the accident. He was indicted in January 2020 for causing death through negligence. The crane operator was never charged.
Even before the evidentiary phase of the trial, Bar’s attorney claimed that shaking a container weighing hundreds of pounds did not allow the hooks to engage. They argued that beside the crane operator, company manager and project manager, no other worker had been questioned, even though at least eight of them were present at the accident. The crane operator was questioned twice by the police. Even though he was accused of letting Abbasi stand under the concrete container, shake it and clean it while it was still attached, no negligence was attributed to him.
During negotiations over a plea bargain, Bar’s attorney, Eran Rao, produced a brief claiming that the accident could not have occurred in the manner described in the indictment. The Labor Ministry inspector, whose report had served as the basis for the indictment, replied that this claim could indeed not be refuted. He added that it could not be ruled out that the accident was caused by the crane operator, a claim which severs the causal link related to site manager Bar, and that it would be best to reach a settlement, if possible.
Thus, the prosecution reached a settlement with Bar, who was convicted according to the amended indictment of a “structure” offense related to work safety. The rule states that one may not use a chain, rope or other hoisting material unless it is of “good structure,” i.e., of sound and reinforced material with no obvious flaws. The maximum punishment for causing death as a result of such an offense is up to one year in prison and a fine of 20,000 shekels.
When she sentenced Bar, Judge Shosh Sheetrit said that the settlement was signed due to significant evidentiary difficulties and with the consent of the Abbasi family which was also compensated in a civil proceeding. “The defendant learned his lesson and it is reasonable to assume that because of the legal proceeding against him, he is sufficiently deterred and from now on will exercise extra caution. Thus the consideration of deterrence – in terms of work safety, strict adherence to procedure and upholding safety rules, no matter how seemingly minor – is given significant weight.” She sentenced him to three months’ probation and a fine of 5,000 shekels (almost $1,500).
Defense attorney Rao says, “There were significant evidentiary difficulties in this case regarding the way the accident occurred. These difficulties, together with an expert opinion on behalf of the defense, led the parties to reach an appropriate plea bargain that was upheld by the court. Also, as part of the civil proceeding, a significant compensation agreement was reached between the contractor company and the family of the deceased.”
Even in cases in which the defendants admit, as part of a plea bargain, to causing death by negligence, the punishments are lenient. Take the case of Abed Amhandi al-Halaika, who was killed in 2016 when a ceiling he was sawing at a Bnei Brak construction site collapsed on him. The two defendants admitted guilt and were convicted as part of a plea bargain that included punishment. The contractor was sentenced to 45 days in prison plus probation, and fined 10,000 shekels. Another worker at the site who was involved in the incident was sentenced to three months of community service and ordered to pay 25,000 shekels in compensation.
In the case of the death of Shi Hui, a Chinese construction worker killed at a construction site in Ramle in 2019 when a crane knocked into beams that fell and struck him on the head, the crane operator was sentenced in a plea bargain to five months of community service and ordered to pay 10,000 shekels in compensation. The second defendant, an electrician, was sentenced to 35 days of community service.
“The way the proceedings were handled in the accidental deaths of Mutassem Abbasi and Khalaf Huwarin shows that despite the state’s claims of improvement in the handling of criminal proceedings in work-accident cases, even in those few cases in which indictments are filed, these cases frequently end with a whimper, with greatly reduced charges and very lenient punishment," says Hadas Tagari, head of the Coalition Against Industrial and Construction Accidents.
An example, she says, is “what happened in the case of Huwarin, who died in late 2019, since by that point one could have expected an improvement in the way the investigations are conducted, especially given the fact that this accident was investigated by the Peles unit (the police unit responsible for investigating work accidents).”
She adds, “The disturbing way these cases are being handled means the prosecution and the police need to re-examine the way that work accidents are addressed. In addition, for a long time the work safety regulations have needed to be amended by the Economy Minister so that responsibility for safety at construction sites is expanded to holders of top positions in the contracting and development companies.
“Although an advanced draft of these regulations was published two years ago,” she notes,”these regulations were not implemented and were amended under the outgoing government.”
Regarding the case of Huwarin’s death, the prosecutor’s office says, “During the evidentiary stage and after a mediation process, the prosecutor’s office reached the conclusion that it would be difficult to secure a conviction of the defendant on the charge of negligent homicide. The settlement, which received the consent of the deceased’s family, has not yet been presented to the court so we cannot elaborate any further.”
About the Abbasi case, the prosecutor’s office says: “In light of the evidentiary difficulties that came to light in the course of the proceeding and after the mediation proceeding, the decision was made to close the case with a settlement, in which the defendant admitted guilt and was convicted because as director of the work site, he allowed the use of a faulty hoisting device that could cause injury or death.”
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