Hatem Abu Ziadeh’s face beams with pride as he recounts how several years ago his Israeli employer in one of Israel’s illegal settlements was forced to give him his job back after he was fired for organizing a union among the Palestinian workers.

Ziadeh, a fifty-four-year-old who lives in the Ramallah-area town of Birzeit in the occupied West Bank, has worked as a car mechanic for more than two decades at the Zarfaty garage, an auto repair shop located in Mishor Adumim, the industrial zone of Israel’s megasettlement Ma’ale Adumim. Like all of Israel’s 279 settlements built in the Palestinian territory, Ma’ale Adumim is considered illegal under international law.

In 2013, Ziadeh stood up to his Israeli employer, insisting on minimum wage and basic labor rights to which Palestinian workers inside Israel and its settlements are entitled, but are rarely granted. With the assistance of the labor organization Workers Advice Center (WAC-MAAN), which helps organize Palestinian and Israeli workers, Ziadeh and about thirty other workers from the West Bank established a union and demanded collective bargaining rights.