Palestinian municipality workers repair a road damaged during the war in the Nuseirat camp for the displaced in the central Gaza Strip on December 22, 2025. (Photo by Eyad Baba / AFP)
Gaza: Head of the General Federation of Palestinian Trade Unions in the Gaza Strip Sami Al Amssi affirmed that the genocidal war waged by the Israeli occupation on the Gaza Strip has resulted in the suspension of around 400,000 workers from their jobs and raised the unemployment rate in the Strip to 77 percent during 2025.
In an exclusive interview with the Qatar News Agency (QNA), Al Amssi said that the war of extermination has pushed workers into catastrophic levels of extreme poverty and food insecurity, and that the labor market is facing the repercussions of the war, whose effects are expected to extend for many years.
He said that the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip represented the final nail in the coffin of vital sectors and economic projects that had provided sources of income for thousands of Palestinian workers, who found themselves added to unemployment rolls and prey to widespread joblessness, transforming them from productive laborers into people in need of aid and assistance.
With the Israeli aggression destroying all industrial, commercial, and agricultural sectors, eliminating the foundations for the revival of these vital fields, and with the continuation of the tight Israeli siege and closure of the Gaza Strip, along with the prevention of the entry of any materials capable of restarting the wheel of life, thousands of Palestinian workers are facing the prospect of continued life below the poverty line and descending into catastrophic levels of extreme poverty, lack of income sources, and consequently food insecurity.
Al Amssi added that with the start of the aggression on Oct. 7, 2023, all labor sectors came to a complete halt, including the construction sector, which employed around 40,000 workers; metal workshops, which employed nearly 10,000 workers, agriculture, which employed about 35,000 workers; and public transport, which employed around 20,000 drivers.
He further said that the destruction and shutdown of the fishing sector, which employed nearly 4,000 fishermen and workers; the tailoring sector, which employed about 8,000 workers, the restaurant and tourism sector, which employed 5,000 workers, as well as the industrial sector, which employed around 8,000 workers pushed all of them into unemployment.
He revealed that total losses amounted to approximately $4 billion in the economic sector, $4.5 billion in the commercial sector, $2.8 billion in transport and communications, and $2.8 billion in the agricultural sector.
He pointed out that the occupation destroyed agricultural lands and water wells, caused a decline in annual vegetable production, and that fish stocks were damaged by 100 percent due to the destruction of hundreds of fishing boats, depriving the population of the Strip of this resource. This, he said, threatens food security in Gaza for years to come and leads to dangerously high levels of food insecurity, as witnessed during periods of famine throughout the war.
Al Amssi concluded his interview with QNA by saying that the start of the second phase of the ceasefire and compensating labor sectors for their losses is the only way to alleviate workers’ suffering, especially since the experiences of Gaza’s workers in previous wars prove that they will not stand helpless in the face of hundreds of thousands of tons of massive rubble, provided that the necessary resources are made available.
