GAZA, (PIC)
Hundreds of Palestinian workers demonstrated, on Saturday, in Khan Yunis city south of the Gaza Strip to demand their rights to work, food, and shelter, which the Israeli war of genocide deprived them of.
This came in a march called for by Palestinian factions, commemorating International Workers’ Day which falls on the first of May of every year.
This occasion passes this year amidst the worsening economic and living crisis in the Strip, coinciding with the rise of poverty and unemployment rates due to the war of genocide.
Participants in the march chanted slogans criticizing the deterioration of living conditions, and demanding Palestinian, international, and Arab parties to intervene to save the workers and provide the minimum of their rights.
According to government and human rights data, hundreds of thousands of workers and employees in the private and government sectors lost their sources of income, as a result of the war and its repercussions, and they have become dependent on food and relief aid.
In a speech, a member of the workers union in Khan Yunis, Issam Muammar, considered this march as a message to the world regarding the “deterioration of the workers’ conditions, amidst the spread of unemployment and famine and the continuation of the siege.”
Muammar explained that the war “caused the destruction of work sources and the disruption of the production wheel in various sectors, especially agricultural and industrial sectors.” He called on Arab and international labor unions to support Palestinian workers and their families in light of the oppressive conditions they are living through.
On Thursday, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said, in a statement, that unemployment rates in Gaza rose to 68 percent during 2025, while the percentage of labor force participation declined to about 25 percent, compared to 40 percent before the war, in an indicator reflecting the scale of the collapse in the labor market.
The bureau added that about 74 percent of those previously employed have today become outside the labor market or within the unemployed category, while the youth category was particularly harmed.
On 25 November 2025, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that the “occupied Palestinian territory is witnessing the deepest economic crisis in its recorded history, as Gaza suffers from an unprecedented and catastrophic collapse.”
This economic collapse coincides with a tight Israeli siege imposed on the Strip since 2007, which worsened the deterioration of living conditions for about 1.9 million displaced people living in worn out tents, out of 2.4 million people in the Strip.
The Israeli occupation authorities also renounced their obligations stipulated in the ceasefire agreement in effect since 10 October 2025, especially regarding opening the crossings and bringing in the agreed upon quantities of relief, food, and medical aid and shelter materials.
The ceasefire agreement was reached following two years of genocide started by Israel on 7 October 2023, with American support, and left more than 72,000 martyrs and more than 172,000 wounded Palestinians.