The land bordering the Gaza Strip in Israel is filled with crop fields and dairy farms, making up a significant part of the country's agriculture. The produce is consumed in the domestic market, and exported around the world. But since the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, foreign farm workers have fled for their lives while Palestinian workers, who have worked on Israeli farms for years, are banned. Our reporter Huang Yue talks to Israeli farmers near the border with Gaza, to learn more. 

76-year-old Rachel Kizer is the owner of about 400 acres of farmland, mostly growing oranges, grapefruits and cacti. She says she used to have ten farm workers from Thailand, but most of them have gone back home, because of the current situation on the border of Israel and the Gaza Strip. The senior farmer now relies on volunteers from different cities in Israel to help, but it's far from enough.

RACHEL KIZER, Israeli farmer "There are lots of work to do. If we finish plucking, it's not enough. We also have to cut the leaves. We must give water in the middle of the night. Only workers can do that. No one else can do that."

Yafit Gabbai is a kindergarten teacher in Tel Aviv. She's recently come to help Rachel pluck oranges once or twice a week.

YAFIT GABBAI, Volunteer from Tel Aviv "We heard the situation is very difficult for the farmers, because everybody left, the foreign employees left. And they are desperate for volunteers to come and help. So we come from the center of the country to help the farmers to do the work, so they don't lose it."

34-year-old Adir Elihu, a third-generation farmer in his family, now worries his vegetables will be left to die in the fields.

ADIR ELIHU, Israeli farmer "We have only five days left to finish picking all this lettuce, otherwise it will all be thrown to the garbage. The packaging factory I work with is also shorthanded. Yesterday, a rocket fell on the ground behind the hill over there. If a rocket falls here on my field, I have to deal with the loss on my own, because I don't have insurance. The government won't reimburse us."

HUANG YUE, Talmei Bilu, Israel "Israel has a highly-developed agricultural industry, even though geographically speaking half of its land is desert. The country is a major exporter of fresh produce and a world-leader in farming technologies. The Israel Farmers Association says about 75-percent of all the country's domestically grown vegetables come from the Gaza border area, along with 20-percent of the fruit and 6-percent of the milk."

Israel's agriculture by the Gaza border relies heavily on foreign laborers, most of them from Thailand. Gazans, who work on a permit regime in Israel, were also a source of labor for the sector.

Statistics show Israel issued 17-thousand-5-hundred daily permits for Gazans to work in Israel before Hamas' attack on October-the-seventh. But now, their permits have been revoked. And Israel says Gazan laborers have been detained in West Bank military facilities, since October-the-seventh.

RACHEL KIZER, Israeli farmer "We are working with Gazan people for years. And when they work with us, they respect me a lot. They call me mummy. Two days before the war, they worked with me. I'm thinking about them. I'm sure they are miserable."

Along with labor shortages, some farmers are not allowed to enter their fields because the land has been turned into restricted military zones. And as the roar of fighter jets and bombs echo across the fields, these farmers say they don't know how long they can hold on here.

Huang Yue, CGTN, Talmei Bilu, Israel.