While all countries of the world celebrate Labor Day, the Palestinian worker, especially in the besieged Gaza Strip, lives in deteriorating economic and social conditions, which were exacerbated by the repeated Israeli attacks on the Strip.
The General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions in Gaza said, on Thursday, that half of the Strip's population lives without a daily income due to the continuation of the Israeli blockade for more than 16 years.
This came in a report issued by the union's president, Sami Al-Amsi, on the occasion of International Workers' Day, corresponding to the first of May of each year.
Al-Amsi said: "With all the world's celebration of Labor Day, talk is renewed about the painful chapters of the tragedy of Palestinian workers, especially in Gaza, as they live under the weight of the siege in the most heinous crime of collective punishment that the world has not witnessed."
He explained that "the blockade has led to an increase in the unemployment rate to 50% and an increase in the poverty rate to about 60%."
He stated that "the economic crises and the repeated Israeli military wars against the Strip and the continuous violations affected the various industrial and productive sectors."
Among those violations, Al-Amsi touched on the fishing sector, saying that Israel "has arrested more than 66 fishermen since 2022 and is still holding 3 of them. It also confiscated about 23 boats, including 16 boats that were destroyed, in addition to the injury of about 28 fishermen by Israeli naval bullets."
And he continued: "The occupation wants to make the fishing profession a dangerous profession to strike the Palestinian economy due to the importance of this sector, which constitutes 15% of the total economic output and employs about four thousand fishermen, and hundreds of workers related to fishing."
He pointed out that Israel's closure of the Erez crossing in the northern Gaza Strip (especially for the passage of individuals), during the Jewish Passover period (between 6-13 April), "incurred losses for the Palestinians in Gaza, who work in Israel, amounting to about $11 million."
In the same context, Al-Amsi called on the competent authorities to "set a minimum wage for workers in line with the current situation in Gaza."
The residents of the Gaza Strip live in deteriorating economic conditions due to the strict Israeli blockade imposed on the Strip since mid-2007.
According to the latest statistics of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, about one and a half million people in Gaza, who number two million and 300 thousand people, live in a state of poverty because of the Israeli restrictions imposed on the Strip.
Tags:
CITY