Palestinian workers are enduring unprecedented devastating suffering amid Israel’s ongoing military offensive and the crime of genocide the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) are committing in the Gaza Strip alongside decades of colonial policies and practices being implemented by IOF across the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt). For years, the labor sector in Gaza has suffered under a prolonged closure imposed since 2008 that has inflicted harsh living and economic conditions due to the Israeli strangulating restrictions and closure, in blatant disregard for workers’ bare basic rights. However, what occurred in the Gaza Strip since October 2023 has exceeded and cannot be compared to any prior crisis. The Israeli siege has escalated into an act of genocide, turning Gaza workers’ daily life into a living hell and becoming themselves another victim of this genocidal war.
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) issues this press release on the International Workers’ Day, marking the first of May each year, in a time hundreds of thousands of Palestinian workers are suffering from tragic economic conditions amid the worst humanitarian disaster the Gaza Strip has ever witnessed due to the genocidal war Israel has waged on the Strip for 18 consecutive months. PCHR emphasizes the violation of Palestinian workers’ rights, particularly their right to just and favorable work conditions and right to basic protection and livelihood security, falls under Israel’s acts calculated to destroy the population’s life essentials. Such acts also aim at obliterating any economic and social prospects that would guarantee a dignified life for the population in general and workers in particular. This is one of the acts of the crime of genocide, where the population is subjected to conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical and psychological destruction.
Before the Israeli military offensive on the Gaza Strip on 07 October 2023, statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics showed the fragility of the labor force conditions in the Gaza Strip that marked high unemployment and poverty rates alongside low standard of living. Unemployment rates reached 45.1% in the Gaza Strip compared to a rate of 12.9% in the West Bank. This alarmingly indicated that unemployment would spread among university and diploma graduates, with youth graduates aged 19–29 experiencing a 73% unemployment rate in Gaza. This rate reflects marginalization of youth and the absence of any future prospects for them in the labor market.1
Only after a few months into the war, the labor sector has witnessed a catastrophic decline. Reports recently issued by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Palestinian Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) underscored that employment rates in Gaza surged into 80% at the end of 2024, 2 meaning that four out of every five working-age individuals had lost their source of income while the West Bank recorded an unemployment rate of 35% due to Israeli-imposed security measures and restrictions on movement alongside closures and daily incursions.3 In this context, hundreds of thousands of workers, who once relied on low daily wages, have been left desperately waiting for humanitarian assistance provided by the relief organizations after they had lost their sole source of income. These workers have become even unable to secure their basic needs of food, medicine and shelter.
The Israeli military offensive has forced almost all factories and economic installations to shut down as 90 percent of homes, infrastructure, and industrial, commercial, agricultural, and service facilities in the Gaza Strip has been destroyed. Moreover, workers have been denied access to agricultural lands and deprived of fishing in the Sea amid the forced displacement of 1.9 million of the Gaza Strip’s population, torn apart in displacement camps which lack the bare minimum essentials of protection and safety. This collapse has paralyzed the local economy and made 201,000 workers lose their jobs; most of them were day workers, constituting more than two thirds of the labor force in Gaza before the war. They were left without any savings or a social security system that would guarantee their protection. These job losses translate into daily labor income losses of USD 21.7 million.4 Given this collapse, multidimensional poverty has dangerously expanded to affect the vast majority of Gaza’s population.
Dr. Salamah Abu Z’eiter, Member of the General Secretariat of the General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions, stated to PCHR’s researcher:
“Workers are the most affected and marginalized group in this war as unemployment has become a widespread condition that has hit all labor sectors. The most significant productive and economic sectors in Gaza have collapsed, so many workers have been left without work. We are talking here about broad productive and manufacturing sectors, including industry, agriculture, commerce, construction, and tourism, which have been almost completely destroyed. This has greatly affected the most vulnerable group, the daily workers, as hundreds of thousands lost their only source of income becoming unemployed and reliable on the available humanitarian aid.”
Gaza workers’ suffering has not been only limited to loss of livelihoods or deterioration of their conditions due to the relentless bombardment, forced displacement and starvation. These workers, who were working in Israel before 07 October 2023, a total of 10,000, were subjected to serious violations, including pursuit and detention in Israeli military camps amid bitter cold weather and under inhuman and cruel conditions without filing any charges against them. They also endured torture, ill-treatment and humiliation while their personal belongings and money were confiscated. Many were also deported to the Gaza Strip in miserable conditions that required medical treatment. PCHR received many harrowing testimonies from the tens of workers who had been arrested and subjected to torture and other forms of cruel and degrading treatment. Several of them remain missing, having been subjected to enforced disappearance.
In the West Bank, the suffering of more than 180,000 Palestinians, who worked in the territory occupied since 1948, is aggravating after these workers have lost their sources of income due to the breakout of war in Gaza. Ever since, they have been denied access to their workplaces in Israel after tightened restrictions on movement have been imposed in the West Bank, leading to heightened rates of unemployment and poverty. Workers have become prey to exploitation and blackmail by employers in the West Bank and inside Israel, amidst a paralyzed economic environment and the absence of effective mechanisms to protect their labor rights. IOF has continued to prevent tens of thousands of workers from working in Israel and even deny them access to their workplaces and economic facilities, particularly in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas in northern West Bank.5 This is not only about preventing them to work but has escalated to a calculated strategy by Israel to strangulate the economic system and deprive the Palestinians of their ability to build a resilient and independent economy. This has materialized through land confiscations, settlement expansion, tightened movement restrictions, deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure and industrial, agricultural, and investment facilities, banning trade outside the West Bank, and the withholding of tax revenues, with the aim of creating a reality that ultimately subdues the population and destroys their resources and means of survival.
PCHR expresses its full solidarity with the Palestinian workers who have been subjected to widescale and systematic Israeli attacks amid deprivation of their labor rights, including decent work, a dignified life, and social justice. PCHR emphasizes that these criminal practices against workers- the backbone of any society- do not only constitute a blatant violation of Israel’s obligations as an occupying power but also a breach of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the principles of international human rights law, particularly those concerning the protection of wages during emergencies. These acts are yet another clear evidence of the ongoing crime of genocide against the Palestinian people. It seems like Israel intends through these practices to destroy the future of the Palestinian population and undermine their resilience and existence on their land through deliberately inflicting on them harsh life conditions. This constitutes a heinous crime against humanity which Israel continues to commit amid the international community’s silence and complicity that embolden the culture of impunity and embody a blatant disregard for the principles of international justice and human dignity. What the Gaza Strip population is experiencing, including workers, requires immediate action from the international community, particularly UN mechanisms, human rights bodies, workers’ unions and federations worldwide, in order to stop these atrocious crimes, provide necessary support for Palestinian workers, protect them and guarantee their right to dignified work and safe life.
