ILO Backs Palestinian Worker Recovery Plan as Job Losses Deepen
The International Labour Organization’s Governing Body adopted a decision on November 12 backing a four-year recovery programme for Palestinian workers, employers and institutions, while urging governments and donors to provide additional resources. The vote gives formal support to the ILO Decent Work and Recovery Programme for the Occupied Palestinian Territory for 2026–2029, but it does not itself guarantee the money or political conditions needed to put the plan into effect.
The ILO decision notes progress made under the programme and the urgent needs of Palestinian workers and employers. It asks the organization’s director-general to keep supporting labor rights and access to workplaces, the sustainability of Palestinian social-security funds, and reform of the permit system that governs many Palestinians’ access to jobs. The Governing Body also welcomed a November 10 partners’ meeting organized to mobilize financing for the programme.
The programme is built around three priorities: restoring employment and viable enterprises, expanding social protection, and strengthening labor-market governance and rights. That matters because the destruction of workplaces, restrictions on mobility and the broader economic contraction have made the Palestinian labor crisis inseparable from the structures of occupation. A recovery plan limited to short-term aid would leave workers dependent while the productive base continues to shrink.
Tripartite backing, worker demands
Palestinian news agency WAFA reported the decision on November 13 after a tripartite delegation addressed the Governing Body. The delegation included Palestine’s ambassador in Geneva, Ibrahim Khraishi; Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions secretary-general Shaher Saed; and Federation of Palestinian Chambers of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture president Abdo Idris. Their participation reflects the ILO’s tripartite model, in which governments, workers and employers all have a formal role.
Saed told the meeting that the crisis has cost approximately 250,000 jobs and nearly $2 billion in labor income, according to WAFA. Those figures were presented by the union leader and should be read as an attributed assessment, not as an independently audited total. Even so, the scale of the loss is consistent with the ILO’s description of a severe labor-market collapse driven by destruction, displacement, mobility restrictions and economic contraction.
Worker participation will be decisive. The Workers’ Group backed the programme and called for unions to be involved in implementation, while the employers’ representative emphasized enterprise recovery, financing and access to markets. Those positions overlap on a basic point: reconstruction cannot be reduced to physical infrastructure. It must restore wages, social protections, bargaining power and the ability of Palestinian firms and farms to operate.
The test is implementation
The decision also exposes the gap between international endorsement and material delivery. The Governing Body “called for additional resources” rather than announcing a fully funded package. Workplace access and permit reform likewise depend on political decisions outside the ILO’s control. Without financing and enforceable labor protections, the programme risks becoming another well-designed framework operating inside an economy denied normal freedom of movement and trade.
That is why the vote should be treated as a starting point, not a victory lap. The ILO has created an institutional vehicle that Palestinian unions, employers and public bodies can use to press donors and governments for concrete commitments. The test will be whether money reaches worker-centered projects, whether unions retain a meaningful role, and whether recovery is allowed to build durable Palestinian economic capacity rather than manage permanent emergency. The plan sits alongside the immediate public-health and service crises already confronting Gaza, but it insists that livelihoods and labor rights belong at the center of recovery.
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