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.