[News] International Workers’ Day: Palestinian Labor Workers Targeted by Israeli Occupation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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● *International Workers’ Day: Palestinian Labor Workers Targeted by
Israeli Occupation*
------------------------------

01-05-2025

May 1, 2025

Ramallah, Palestine - On the occasion of International Workers' Day, which
falls on May 1 of each year, Palestinian prisoner defense groups highlight
how the Israeli occupation has targeted Palestinian workers for decades,
and that arrests and persecution constitute the most prominent oppressive
policies pursued against them.

This is in addition to the fact that a large portion of the Palestinian
prisoners who fought for the freedom of their land and people are from the
working class. Over the decades, the occupation has furthered its policies
to target them, deprive them of their rights, and impose increased control
and oversight over their right to work and life.

The Commission of Detainees’ Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society,
and the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association confirmed in
a statement that since the beginning of the ongoing genocide, the
occupation has escalated its targeting of workers and their persecution
through arrests. The issue of Palestinian workers has become one of the
most prominent and pressing matters, given the escalation of systematic
crimes and violations against them, including arrests, persecution, and
torture.

Thousands of Palestinian workers from across Palestine have been subjected
to mass arrests and systematic crimes, as part of a policy of collective
revenge that the occupation has escalated in an unprecedented manner,
compared to previous periods when Palestine witnessed widespread popular
uprisings against the Israeli occupation. We recall here the case of Gaza
workers, thousands of whom were arrested after October 7 while working in
the territories occupied in 1948. They were detained in harsh and
oppressive conditions and subjected to systematic torture without trial or
charge before the majority were later released. Several of these workers
were martyred, while the occupation continues to impose the crime of
enforced disappearance on others and refuses to disclose their fate.

The occupation has escalated its persecution and arrests of workers for
entering the territories occupied in 1948 without permits, including in
occupied Jerusalem. These arrests have been accompanied by various forms of
assault and detention in harsh and difficult conditions. This is taking
place amidst escalating policies of systematic oppression against our
people, the isolation of governorates and towns from one another, the
continued expansion of settlements, and the theft of Palestinian funds.

Prisoners' institutions renew their demand to all international human
rights bodies at all levels to open an independent international
investigation in light of the continued escalation of crimes and the war of
genocide against our people in Gaza. They must work to put an end to the
escalating and unprecedented crimes against prisoners in Israeli occupation
prisons, and to restore the true and necessary role of human rights in the
face of the brutality of the occupation, supported by international forces
that ignore the entire human and humanitarian community and all the voices
of free people in the world.
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