Two Palestinian construction workers from east Jerusalem fell to their death at a Tel Aviv construction site on Wednesday morning.
Magen David Adom paramedics were forced to immediately pronounce their deaths after they fell from the 40th floor of the building.
The two workers, Razi Abu Sbitan and Ahmed Asyad, are related, according to Hatem Abu Sbitan, a relative of both who spoke to 103FM radio later in the day.
“The job is hard and dangerous,” Abu Sbitan said. “We told them that many times. They kept telling us, ‘There is no other option for us. We need a livelihood.’”
Abu Sbitan said that Asyad was married with a child on the way.
“He just got married and he waited three years to have a child,” he told the station. “[His widow] is the biggest problem now. She is pregnant; she is not well. At the moment, she does not understand what happened.”
Abu Sbitan claimed that the Israel Police, who have opened an investigation into the incident, told the family that an initial probe suggested that the harnesses of the construction workers broke.
“We have a problem with the police,” he said. “We, a family of 50 people, are sitting here outside the building trying to understand more about what happened. All they have told us is that they are checking.”
Later on Wednesday, a 33-year-old construction worker was moderately injured after falling from a Nahariya construction site, and a 23-year-old worker was seriously injured at a construction site in Kiryat Ata. The latter was rushed to Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa for treatment.