On the International Day for Occupational Safety and Health 2025, DWRC calls on the international trade union movement to step up their actions and mobilization to ensure protection for Palestinian and international workers in the occupied Palestinian territories, and hold Israel accountable for its grave violations of international law

Ramallah – 28 April 2025: For the second year in a row, we commemorate the International Day for Occupational Safety and Health while Palestinian and international workers in occupied Palestine are exposed to unprecedented threats to their safety and their lives, many of them specifically targeted because of their professions. As Israel has resumed its war on Gaza after a brief pause earlier this year, and amidst levels of destruction and damages that reach nearly 90% of built areas, workplaces & infrastructure, coupled with the renewed use of starvation as a weapon of war against Gaza’s population, Israeli violence continues to be the highest cause of Palestinian workers’ death and injury. While workers in the Gaza Strip, and those engaged in journalistic and humanitarian work, are constantly targeted, the brutal Israeli repression and military operations against Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and the nearly 900 barriers to movement expose most Palestinian work commuters to daily harassment, violence and loss of working hours. Workers are also subjected to increasing attacks by the Israeli army and Israeli settlers at work, whether in ambulances, hospitals, schools, shops, or agricultural lands.

As the International Labor Organization focuses this year on how AI & digitalization are transforming occupational safety and health and can reduce workers’ exposure to risks at work, and the ITUC warns of the added pressure and risks that the growing use of AI, surveillance and automation generate for workers, the use of AI & digital technologies as tools of oppression, warfare and mass murder are foremost on our minds as Palestinians. Indeed, AI & digital technologies have been developed and used extensively by the Israeli occupying power and its military as tools for mass surveillance and repression of Palestinians. Even more alarming, AI based programs and automated systems (such as “Lavender” & “Where’s Daddy?”) have been used for selecting targets of bombings and missile strikes, leading to the mass killings of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, with automation allowing rapid multiplication of targets based on data aggregation regardless of accuracy or any moral and legal considerations. At the same time, tech workers, who mobilized to denounce the involvement of Big Tech companies and their technologies in the perpetration of human rights abuses in occupied Palestine have been ignored, silenced or dismissed.

While other risks at work continue to claim victims among Palestinian workers, including construction sector accidents, the single greatest cause of deaths and injury to Palestinian workers are not workplace accidents or work-related accidents as they may also occur in other countries worldwide. The single greatest cause of deaths and injury to Palestinian workers are Israeli warfare and violence by Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers directed against the Palestinian civilian population. Last year, we reported alarmingly high numbers of Palestinian workers in various sectors killed on and off duty, among them journalists and media workers, health workers, civil defense workers, United Nations staff members, and humanitarian aid workers in general. These numbers have more than doubled, as has the body of evidence of continued deliberate targeting by Israel of workers engaged in lifesaving humanitarian work, namely healthcare and relief workers, as well as those whose jobs it is to report about what is happening to the world, namely journalists and media workers. To date, the Gaza governmental media office has reported that more than 1400 physicians and healthcare workers have been killed, as well as 113 civil defense workers. The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has reported that than 200 journalists and media workers have been killed. UN OCHA indicated that at least 412 aid workers have been killed in Gaza, including 291 UN staff. Dozens of healthcare workers, civil defense workers, media workers and UN staff have been killed while on duty and/or inside clearly marked premises or vehicles that should not have been targeted by reason of their civilian and humanitarian purposes and missions.

Continued absence of accountability for extremely grave violations of international humanitarian and human rights law puts not only Palestinian workers at greater risk, but may affect the safety and well-being of all workers operating worldwide in conflict zones. The recent Israeli “probe” into the incident of the deliberate targeting and killing by the Israeli army of 15 Palestinian aid workers in Rafah (8 PRCS medics, 6 civil defense workers and one UN staff member), conducted once it became impossible for Israel to continue denying the facts, only concluded that there was “a chain of “professional failures” and fired a deputy commander, utterly failing to adequately characterize the crimes committed and hold perpetrators accountable.

Therefore, we call upon the international trade union movement to step up their actions and mobilization to ensure protection for Palestinian and international workers in the occupied Palestinian territories, and demand that governments take concrete steps and measures to hold Israel accountable for its crimes under international law.

We also reiterate our call to the international community to take immediate measures to impose a ceasefire in Gaza and provide international protection to the Palestinian people in the entire occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. The international community should ensure that the rules of international humanitarian law are applied by enforcing sanctions for systematic and grave violations, including those that are committed against media and humanitarian workers, and ending Israel’s impunity that has made such widespread violations possible.

On this day, also called Workers’ Remembrance Day, we ask you to join us in remembering all Palestinian and international workers deliberately targeted because of their profession and duties. We shall continue demanding justice, compensations and reparations for them and their families. May they rest in power.

Let us remember them by their names and their work (this list is not exhaustive): *Palestinian physicians, who died while detained by Israel: Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh, Dr. Iyad al-Rantisi, and Dr. Ziad Eldalou *PRCS medics killed while attempting to rescue 6 year old Hind Rajab and despite coordination for safe passage with the Israeli army on 29/01/2024: Yusuf al-Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun *PRCS medics assassinated in Rafah during a rescue mission to civilians on 23/03/2025: Mustafa Khafaja, Ezzedine Shaat, Saleh Muammar, Rifaat Radwan, Mohammed Bahloul, Ashraf Abu Labda, Mohammed Hilieh, and Raed Al-Sharif. *Palestinian & Lebanese journalists assassinated by Israel while performing their professional duties: Shireen Abu Akleh (11/05/2022), Issam Abdallah, Hamza Al Dahdouh, Mustafa Thuraya, Ismail Al Ghoul, Rami Al Refee, Ghassan Najjar, Wissam Kassem, Mohammed Reda, Ayman Al Gedi, Faisal Abu Al Qumsan, Mohammed Al-Ladaa, Fadi Hassouna, Ibrahim Sheikh Ali, Mahmoud Islim Al-Basos, Hossam Shabat, Hilmi al-Faqaawi, and Ahmed Mansour (CPJ). *World Central Kitchen workers assassinated during the deliberate targeting of their convoy on 1/04/2024: Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, Laizawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, Damian Soból, Jacob Flinkinger, John Chapman, James “Jim” Henderson and James Kirby *UNOPS employee, killed when a UN compound in Deir al-Balah was damaged on 19/03/2025: Marin Valev Marinov