According to various estimates, approximately 30,000 foreign workers are employed in 80,000 Israeli homes. Many of their employers are now living in fear. Even those who have already dismissed their employees are still reluctant to be identified. Y., a high-tech consultant from Mevasseret Yerushalayim, said goodbye to his housekeeper a week ago. She had worked for him for three years, and last week she told him that she missed her children and planned to return home.

"I don't know if it was because of the situation," he says. "Maybe it was a planned trip, but if she hadn't left, we would have had to let her go. The ads on the radio and on television are very frightening, and we have also heard about raids in our area. There are neighborhoods here that are full of Filipinas. Our friends just had a baby and they hired a Filipina nanny without worrying about it. But I can't deal with this fear."

In November 2001, an amendment to the Law of Entry to Israel went into effect, enabling a police officer with a warrant from the Magistrate's Court to enter a private home "if he sees that there is a reasonable basis to suspect that a person residing illegally in Israel is in the residential location." In September 2002, the Immigration Authority was established and charged with the task of deporting 50,000 foreign workers by the end of 2003. In July, the fine for employers of foreign workers without permits was doubled to NIS 10,000. In August, after accumulating a good deal of information from informants, the immigration police launched "Operation Housecleaning" to locate and remove foreign workers employed in housekeeping jobs.

Journalists from all the media outlets were invited to observe the first raid, in Herzliya Pituah, in which eight workers were arrested. There was also an accompanying ad campaign on radio and television. "In the home?" the announcer asks in a dramatic voice. "Yes, in the home. Employing a foreign worker in the home is a violation of the law. It is not legal and it does not work." The Immigration Authority sought to emphasize that the operation was directed at the employers. "The idea is to deal primarily with the employers, with the home owners," David Mondani of the Tel Aviv immigration police told Channel One.

But contrary to the message they wanted to send, the immigration police are not pursuing employers of illegal workers that assiduously. Only a few employers were fined in the most recent operation, and not one of them has paid the fine, but there is an effort to blur this fact. "Twenty employers have already paid the fine," says Superintendent Rafi Yafeh, spokesman for the immigration police. "The rest, of which I don't know the number, are in various stages of appealing the fine." However, the legal bureau of the Industry and Trade Ministry, which enforces the fines, says that investigative files have been opened as a result of this operation, but no fines have yet been paid.

Since the beginning of the year, 140 fines totaling NIS 700,000 have been levied on employers of foreign house cleaners. But employers do not rush to pay up, and the immigration police and Industry and Trade Ministry have not made any special effort to collect the debts. In July, at a meeting of the Knesset Committee on Foreign Workers, Ephraim Cohen, head of the foreign workers' administration at the Industry and Trade Ministry, said that in 2002, employers were fined a total of NIS 26 million, but only NIS 12 million was collected. In 2003, only NIS 2 million was collected out of a total of NIS 8 million in fines. A total of 580 cases against employers of foreign workers were closed in the past year.

"Sometimes, the public interest is to get the foreign worker to leave the country as quickly as possible and not to delay him until he decides to divulge who was employing him," an official from the Industry and Trade Ministry explained at the committee hearing. Committee chairman Ran Cohen (Meretz) proposed imposing higher fines on employers who flout the law. Ephraim Cohen objected. "The more you raise the fines and impose them, the less citizens will be prepared to pay. They'll all go to court."

Panic in Savyon

The law prohibits the employment of foreign workers as house cleaners, even if they have valid visas. S., a musician from Ganei Tikva, hired such a woman. "She has a visa, she takes care of an elderly woman, and on her day off, she works for me. Whens she started to work, I was sure there was no problem with it, but now I understand that when she is working for me, she isn't legal. If they catch me, I'll say I didn't know, that I was sure that I could hire her. I'll do whatever I can not to pay such a big fine. It's scary. I think about it all the time. My worry is all because of the fine. No one's going to look at me like a criminal if they catch me with a cleaner who comes once a week, but I do not want to pay such a large amount of money. It's also hard to see her fear. She's afraid to take the bus, because two awful things could happen: She could be arrested or she could be hurt in a terror attack."

A., a teacher from Kiryat Ono, let her housekeeper go a few days ago. "I'm a very ethical and law-abiding person," she says. "I always knew that employing her was illegal and I didn't feel good about it. I think of myself as the most honest person in the world, and hearing all the time about how it is illegal was too much for me."

Did you think about her? That she would be suddenly out of work?

"She told me that I wasn't the first one to let her go. I didn't have a problem with it. After all, she is here illegally. She took a risk from the start. To me, anyone who breaks the law is unethical. I paid her what I owed her. She should go back to where she came from. The State of Israel doesn't have to worry about her or her children, whom she supports with the money she earns here. Let them all get on the plane and leave."

L., who works in the media and lives in Tel Aviv, witnessed the immigration police arresting a foreign worker and putting her into a patrol car. In her neighborhood, an Israeli housekeeper informed on foreign workers whom she claimed had taken her work away. "They knew exactly where to go," says L. "I felt bad in a way that's hard to explain. At the same time, my employee became ill from all the anxiety and decided that she couldn't take it anymore. She left, and I'm not sure I would have kept her on after what I saw. It's scary and unbelievably stressful."

In Savyon, the panic is at its height. The immigration police have been there several times and entered a number of houses. Rumor has it that one Filipina managed to escape from them at the last moment by hiding in the large garden behind the house. The police officers entered the house and found some things they believe belonged to the foreign worker and not to the family. The investigation is continuing. Worried residents have asked local council chair Romemia Halevy-Segal to forbid the police from entering Savyon.

"There's panic here," says Halevy-Segal. "But how can I prevent them from coming in? Though it bothers me. If they want to expel foreign workers, why don't they bring a bus to south Tel Aviv and load the workers on it - whoever passes by there can be told to get on and that's it. They don't have to come to Savyon."

Early one afternoon last week, an hour when the Filipinas are normally hurrying to finish the last shopping before lunch and picking up the children from school, the Savyon shopping center was empty. Nor were any Filipinas to be seen next to the pre-school or the elementary school. A beautiful millionaire waited by the door of her daughter's kindergarten. Until recently, she had a foreign worker who picked the girl up from school. Then the woman left and wasn't immediately replaced. "They're better, but I'm not willing to have them search my house," she says.

Now she has an Israeli au pair to take care of her child. "She may not be as good, but she can travel abroad with us when we take the children on vacation. An illegal Filipina couldn't come with us, since she wouldn't be able to get back into the country."

"This issue hasn't come up yet in the local council elections," says Marsha Caspi, who is running for head of the local Savyon council in the upcoming election. "And I regret that, because it's something that is hurting a lot of people." Her employees returned to their home countries when they realized they could be deported. "They were afraid of being arrested. It's not pleasant to think that you could find yourself in jail one morning. And now I'm looking for an Israeli housekeeper through the employment office, and there are no responses. It's a shame that they're doing this in such an extreme way. You can't educate people overnight."

Manhunt in Kfar Shmaryahu

The mood in Kfar Shmaryahu is also very uneasy. "There is definitely a bad atmosphere," says Shmuel Ben-Tovim, the council head. "No one wants to come out against the law, but the law could be carried out differently. What's happening here is a manhunt. People from the immigration police come around here almost every day and arrest workers, and not always in the gentlest fashion. There were cases where foreign workers fled from the house and the police chased after them in the street."

The big story in Kfar Shmaryahu is about a well-known wealthy woman who panicked when the immigration police showed up at her house. She fled to the neighbors across the street and hid there until the policemen left with her foreign employee. "There are several families here in which the husband sent the wife and kids abroad so the police won't come into their home," says former Meretz leader Shulamit Aloni, a resident of Kfar Shmaryahu. "A foreign worker opened the door and they just grabbed her. And all this is done so that those close to the government will be able to bring in other foreign workers to Israel in place of those who are deported, and make millions of dollars."

Galia Albin of Kfar Shmaryahu parted with her foreign house cleaner about a year ago. "Now I have a woman from Netanya. I didn't want to be a criminal. The foreign woman was a better worker, but I want to sleep peacefully at night."

R., a businesswoman from Kfar Shmaryahu, dismissed her foreign house cleaner several weeks ago. "What's happening here is very unpleasant. People are walking down the street and suddenly police officers get out of a car and pounce on them and try to catch the poor man or woman and put them in the car. When they come into people's homes, they search everywhere - in the garden, behind the bushes, in the closets. It's terrifying and so callous. It really saddens me."

But the one who really pays the price in the end is the foreign worker whom you fired.

"I can't stand the idea of [the police] coming into my house. I couldn't bear that. It's not the steep fine. The reason was that I would not be able to stand a situation in which they came and took her from my house. My parents were in the Holocaust. The Germans took them from their homes. I couldn't witness something like that, so I let her go."

Journalist Yaron London, who opposes the deportation of foreign workers, has proposed an idea that would make it easier for employers and provide them with a good excuse should they be caught with a foreign worker in their home. "How can you obligate a person who is hiring a laborer to ask him what his citizenship is?" asks London. "I've talked with a number of legal experts. Some told me that a case could be made here. Others said that it was unreasonable [to imagine that one could] hire a worker who speaks with a foreign accent or doesn't know Hebrew at all and not know that he is an illegal worker."

Attorney Oded Feller of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), says an employer must report every hiring of an employee to the National Insurance Institute (NII), so it is not only legitimate, but mandatory to ask the worker who he is and where he comes from. "From the human rights perspective, the employer ought to know who his workers are, so he can provide them with all the obligatory working conditions."

"It's true that it's a breach of privacy to ask a person who he is and if he is residing in the country legally," says Prof. Claude Klein, an expert on constitutional law. "But when the national objective is to remove the illegal workers from the country, it is not a violation of privacy if you ask them some questions about their identity. Especially now that there is such a big campaign on and it can no longer be avoided."

Informants, or good citizens?

The Immigration Authority is proud of Operation Housecleaning and certain that it has been a dizzying success. The atmosphere at the administration's spanking new headquarters in Ramle is very upbeat. They say they never expected their campaign would arouse so much anxiety. The operation's clever name was the brainchild of Superintendent Orit Friedman, the assistant to the authority's spokesperson. "I didn't know I had ideas like that in me," says Friedman. "`Housecleaning' has a double meaning - it emphasizes housekeeping and also that the cleaners are being removed from the houses. Foreign workers are being cleaned out of homes. An ad campaign always needs a nice catchphrase, something to grab the attention."

"We felt that the name was catchy and also served the purpose of the operation," says Rafi Yafeh, the spokesman. He adds that the first commercial was such a success "that you have no idea how much the public did its part with messages, declarations, letters and the Internet."

You mean that people acted as informants?

Yafeh and Friedman both burst out laughing and reply in unison: "It's not informing, it's good citizenship."

The campaign's tag line - "It's not legal. And it doesn't work." - came from Ofer Golan, an advertising executive from Ra'anana, who presented it to the Government Advertising Bureau, which produced the ads. "The idea really isn't pleasant, because deportation is not a pleasant thing," he says. "But what other means does the state have at its disposal? I also do ads for products that I taste and think are awful, but if I said they're awful, I'd be out of a job."

Golan's campaign worked. After it was aired several times, the first raid in Herzliya Pituah was, says Yafeh, "a real bingo. We got hundreds of messages that at such and such an address there were workers and our action was very precise. The reporters saw a humane, very precise operation. There were no mistakes - we had all the addresses correct. We brought all the media. We wanted it to be seen in every home. We didn't grant exclusivity to anyone, and it was a great success."

The media cooperated with the Immigration Authority. "The interest shown by the reporters was decisive," says Friedman. "Had we gone in quietly, we would have had to arrest 1,200 workers and we wouldn't have achieved any enforcement," says Yafeh. "The way it worked with the media, we didn't even need to get to 120 workers; 20 was enough to get the deterrent message across."

To illustrate just how effective the media's cooperation was, Yafeh reads from a transcript of a report broadcast on Channel Two news. Anchor Gadi Sukenik introduced the report: "As expected, the pursuit of foreign workers in Israeli streets has led to a significant increase in demand for house cleaners, as much as five times greater than before." And reporter Smadar Peled continued: "The economy, and households, are in an emergency situation. Thousands of dusty homes with dishes piled in the sink have already been waiting long weeks for a savior."

Yafeh smiles with delight. "We didn't conduct a mass search. But look how they talk about thousands of houses. Just 120 workers were arrested. We didn't intend to frighten people, but the results have been welcome. We invested in selective and narrow enforcement, and achieved a far greater deterrent effect."

Friedman has even more praise for the operation: "The campaign was constructed brilliantly. First radio and television, and then we talked about a specific niche - foreign workers in housekeeping jobs - and when everything was ripe, we went into action accompanied by all the media. We showed that we keep our promises."

Afraid to leave the house

Those suffering the most are the workers. The Immigration Authority says 120 workers were arrested during the operation; the Industry and Trade Ministry puts the number at 108. Hundreds more have already left the country out of fear. And hundreds have been fired from their jobs. The offices of the Kav La'oved workers' hotline have been flooded with workers who were fired and did not receive all their rights.

"One woman employer called the immigration police to come to her house and take away her foreign workers, so she wouldn't have to pay the employee what she was owed. That kind of thing is also happening now," says Hana Zohar of Kav La'oved.

Still, in Zohar's view, the plight of workers with visas is even worse. "In Israel, it's the legal workers who are actually treated like slaves," she says. "Many employers take their passports and, from a legal standpoint, they are chained to the employer who brought them in. The illegal workers have a communal life and are also freer at work: When a boss doesn't pay them, they move on to another job."

What do you propose?

"What would happen to the state if it were to grant citizenship to 100,000 workers who have been living here for five years already? In the United States, they naturalize foreign workers. Why shouldn't we do the same thing?"

It's too late for something like that to help Ambrose, 39. In Ghana he was a farmer. He came to Israel seven years ago to try to earn more money for his wife and their two small children. He hasn't left Israel once since then, for fear that he wouldn't be able to return. He hasn't seen his children in seven years. He cleans 10 houses a week, and until a few weeks ago, he was fairly content here. "Israel is a free and democratic country," he says.

But lately, his employers have been telling him they won't be needing him anymore. "I had a family that went on a summer vacation. They promised to call when they got back. I waited a few weeks and they didn't call. When I called them, they said they couldn't hire me because I wasn't legal. I'd worked for them for four years and I asked them to give me vacation pay. The woman said she wouldn't pay anything."

Kav La'oved was able to resolve the payment issue, but they could do nothing to assuage Ambrose's fear of the immigration police. "I'm leaving at the end of the month. It's impossible to live here without work."

Blossom has already packed her things. She is 45 and has been in Israel with her husband for 11 years. They left five children behind in Nigeria, two of whom are at university. "Only yesterday they sent me an e-mail and asked what will happen when we get back to Nigeria. There won't be anyone to pay for their studies. But apparently I don't have a choice," she says.

"I work for six families. Yesterday, one of them fired me. The other families are also acting strange. They haven't fired me, but they call and tell me not to come because they are afraid and don't want to pay the fine. I'm afraid, too. You walk in the street and are constantly looking all around, because they could come up from behind. They can come into your house. It's scary all the time."

Aron, 35, has been in Israel for five years. An economist who was unable to find work in his native Nigeria, he came here in search of a better place. For several weeks now, he has been living in terrible fear. He has not been fired from his job, but the fear of the immigration police is so great, he says, that many Africans have lost weight because of all the anxiety and tension.

"We hardly ever leave the house," he says. "Before you go out, you check to make sure there are no suspicious-looking people in the street. I think twice before I go out, because every trip out of the house could end up being very unpleasant. All day, I ask myself what to do: Should I stay here and pray that everything will be okay, or should I return home?

Back in Nigeria, about 20 relatives depend on the financial support he has been providing. "If I go back, their situation will be very bad, and I also don't know what I would do there. I wasn't able to find work there and the situation hasn't improved. In Nigeria, there are a lot of Israeli workers in oil and construction companies, so why shouldn't we be able to work here? It's legitimate for you to want to protect your economy, but why with such cruelty? We are not taking the places of Israelis. You don't want to do these jobs."

The treasury waves a carrot

In recent months, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated his intention to press the campaign against foreign workers in order to get Israeli workers into housekeeping jobs. "I do not plan to wait for the 2004 budget, but to start acting immediately against the foreign workers, and you must help me," he told the Knesset Finance Committee in July. In August, he said that the jobs vacated by foreign workers "should be taken by the single mothers."

The Finance Ministry and the Industry and Trade Ministry also formulated a special assistance plan: Every family that employs a single parent and pays him or her more than NIS 1,200 a month, would receive an incentive of NIS 1,000 per month for a year. A single parent would receive an incentive of NIS 9,600 if he or she works for an entire year, or a percentage of this total for working less time.

These incentives don't seem to have impressed many people. The single mothers' hotline at the Employment Authority got just 13 calls this week from employers looking for an Israeli house cleaner. Out of 142 women referred for jobs, only one was hired. "I'd expect there to be dozens of inquiries from prospective employers," says Yehudit Saroussi, the director of the hotline. "Apparently, there are still enough foreign workers to do the job. If there was a shortage, they would turn to us."

The jobs aren't all that enticing.

"Most people would like a job with more of a future, where they could earn more and not work so hard. No one wants to work cleaning houses. Single mothers would rather be secretaries or receptionists. They would like to work in telemarketing or in childcare. They don't want to be maids."

"It's a process that will take time," says Benny Fefferman, head of the Industry and Trade Ministry's Manpower Planning Authority. "The labor market doesn't work in an instant. Employers still believe they'll be able to obtain foreign workers. A little patience is required."

"These incentives perpetuate the existing social system," says Hana Zohar. "The rich women get a grant and the single mothers are compelled, like their mothers before them, to go out to work as maids. They're putting them back where they came from instead of helping them to learn and to get ahead."

Nor have other employment services received many inquiries from employers looking for Israeli house cleaners, although there was a marked increase in such inquiries in Herzliya. In August, 28 prospective employers contacted the Employment Authority. In September, the number was up to 49.

The Employment Authority in Tel Aviv received 14 inquiries, and just one woman was hired. The Jerusalem offices got about 10 inquiries, the average in a normal month. The Haifa office got six inquiries, and one woman was hired. The offices in Netanya and Hadera received seven inquiries and three women were hired. The panic hasn't hit Caesarea yet, or other well-off communities near the development towns and Arab locales. "There aren't a lot of foreign workers in Caesarea," says Shimon Stern, former head of the Caesarea committee. "We don't need foreign workers. We have workers from Or Akiva. If we need a plumber, we get him from Or Akiva, too."

Not everyone in Herzliya Pituah is worried, either. One resident millionaire who employs a Filipina in his home is unfazed by the highly publicized operation. His Filipina housekeeper is continuing with her normal routine, he says. She answers the phone and leaves the house without fear. "If they catch me, I'll pay the fine and bring in another Filipina," he says. "When you have money, you have everything. With money, you can buy everything."