Sri Lanka to send 10,000 workers to Israel in 2026 as labour ties deepen

Sri Lanka is moving to send 10,000 workers to Israel over the course of 2026, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Vijitha Herath, has announced, deepening Colombos labour ties with Israel.

Herath made the announcement while handing travel permits to 164 workers bound for Israels construction and infrastructure sector, who were selected from a waiting list of around 3,700 for construction jobs. So far this year 2,500 Sri Lankans have been deployed to Israel, with openings prepared for a further 6,500 and around 1,000 more expected in a new sector, working towards the 10,000 target, he said.

The minister framed the recruitment as transparent and free of corruption, saying the process had been rescued from the intermediaries and political interference that he claimed had previously shaped who secured jobs, and that Sri Lankans could now find overseas work at low cost through official registration with the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.

The vacancies Sri Lanka is filling exist largely because Israel revoked the work permits of tens of thousands of Palestinian labourers after the Hamas-led attack of 7 October 2023, shutting them out of agriculture and construction and turning to South Asia to replace them. Sri Lanka signed a deal in 2023 to send 10,000 farm workers, and has since widened cooperation across sectors including caregiving, agriculture, construction, hotels and housekeeping, manufacturing and restaurant work, signing a further memorandum in December 2025 to open service-sector employment.

Around 8,000 Sri Lankans are already working in Israel. The expansion has continued without interruption through Israels assault on Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, and its strikes across Lebanon.

The recruitment has drawn sustained criticism within Sri Lanka. Critics have pointed to the contradiction that Sri Lanka chairs the UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People, even as it supplies Israel with the labour to sustain sectors emptied of Palestinian workers, with some describing the policy as immoral.

Safety concerns have also been borne out. Two Sri Lankan caregivers were killed in the 7 October 2023 attacks, and Sri Lankan workers have since died during the war, yet the Bureau of Foreign Employment has repeatedly downplayed the risks while raising quotas and easing application limits.

Colombos economic and security cooperation has grown in recent years, from the opening of a Sri Lankan consulate in Haifa in 2024 to a 50 million US dollar deal to refurbish Israeli-built Kfir fighter jets.