Ramallah – 28 April 2026 – Workers around the world are commemorating this day in a deteriorating context, where traditional work hazards intersect with an unsafe work environment resulting from ongoing restrictions and rights violations, compounding occupational safety and health threats and undermining workers’ right to a safe and dignified work environment.
This is particularly true in Palestine, where occupational risks to which Palestinian workers are exposed have increased manifold. Such risks are no longer limited to working conditions, but extend to direct threats to workers’ lives and affect their general physical and mental well-being, including when they commute to and from work. The continuous system of restrictions on movement imposed by the Israeli occupation on Palestinians inside the occupied Palestinian territory includes permanent, occasional and sudden checkpoints, long delays, denial of access to workplaces, detention of workers, accompanied by exhausting hours of deliberate waiting at the Israeli occupation’s checkpoints. Some workers have also been shoot while trying to reach their jobs. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) recorded 925 obstacles to movement[1] and about 2000 incidents of movement restriction during the year 2025, an average of 38 incidents per week. While Israeli permit revocations and restrictions in place since October 2023 ban most former Palestinian workers in the Israeli labor market from returning to their prior jobs, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics indicated that about 51 thousand workers were employed in Israel and Israeli settlements in the fourth quarter 2025. In light of the restrictions imposed on movement and access, these workers are particularly vulnerable to hazards, lack of protection, and exploitation, as some workers are forced to take dangerous ways to reach their workplaces. On 14/4/2026, in a particularly marking incident, a garbage truck carrying about 70 Palestinian workers from the West Bank trying to reach their jobs in the Israeli labor market was stopped by the Israeli police, and the workers were detained. Seeking desperately to earn a living, they had been piled up in suffocating, humiliating and life-threatening conditions inside a closed container, in a particularly unhygienic environment. Since October 2023, UN OCHA has documented the killing of 16 Palestinians and the injury of more than 246 others, while trying to cross the apartheid wall separating the occupied West Bank from occupied East Jerusalem and Israel[2], in order to search for jobs or reach their workplaces, as most workers continue to be arbitrarily denied permits.
In addition to these risks, the Palestinian Ministry of Labor has indicated that the construction and industrial sectors are one of the most dangerous sectors in terms of the work environment in Palestine, due to the nature of work and high exposure to risks at work sites. On the other hand, reports of the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute (MAS) have confirmed that available figures on work injuries do not reflect their true size due to poor reporting and the non-commitment of many employers to reporting injuries, in addition to the absence of a unified monitoring and documentation system linked to occupational safety and health standards. This reality constitutes a clear violation of the occupational safety and health standards adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO), which focused this year’s campaign for the World OSH day on “ensuring a healthy psychosocial working environment”.
In the Gaza Strip, occupational safety and health risks take an even more serious dimension in light of the war and widespread destructions, where workers are exposed to constant risks related to the remnants of war, including more than 70,000 unexploded ordnances based on estimates by the United Nations Mine Action Service, in addition to environmental pollution, sewage leakage, living in tents and shelters that lack the most basic safety conditions, and lack of availability of the most basic protective equipment due to the blockade and severe restrictions on entry of goods and supplies into Gaza. Workers, especially in the humanitarian field and those working on rubble removal, are facing these risks, on a daily basis while performing their work in an environment that lacks minimal protection, and a complete absence of oversight from competent authorities.
Accordingly, the Democracy and Workers’ Rights in Palestine reaffirms that ensuring occupational safety and health for Palestinian workers is a fundamental and indivisible right that requires immediate and decisive measures to ensure their protection from risks to their lives and dignity. We call upon the Palestinian Ministry of Labor, trade unions, employers’ organizations, international organizations and the international community to fulfill their respective obligations, contribute in addressing these challenges and provide the necessary protection to Palestinian workers. We call for:
- Strengthening monitoring and inspection of workplaces.
- Reactivating the Occupational Safety and Health Committee in the Gaza Strip to mitigate the current gap in oversight and protection
- Holding all those who commit violations of rights, acts of violence and harassment against Palestinian workers, while they commute to and from work and/or while at work, accountable for their actions in order to ensure their right to work in a safe, healthy and dignified environment in line with decent work standards.
- Developing mechanisms to deal with emergencies in Palestine with regard to occupational health and safety measures
- Amending the Labor Law and its by-laws in line with international standards and including legal provisions concerning emergency and extraordinary circumstances.
- Providing protection and psychological support to workers
- Organizing and intensifying awareness raising programs among workers and employers
- Internationally, putting pressure to stop attacks and violence against Palestinian workers, especially humanitarian workers and media workers, and ensuring respect for humanitarian law.
- Advocating for the release of all Palestinian workers arbitrarily been detained after October 2023 while undertaking humanitarian work and duties.
References
- https://www.ochaopt.org/content/movement-and-access-west-bank-april-2026
- https://www.un.org/unispal/document/humanitarian-situation-update-352-west-bank/
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