At the start of the 1920s, Jewish mass migration to Palestine was at its peak, promoted by the Colonial British Mandate in Palestine and the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Palestinian labor movements had formed during the late stages of the Ottoman Empire, but the first official representative body was officially registered in 1925 as the Palestine Arab Workers’ Society (PAWS).1 PAWS was a response to several factors: Jewish immigration to Palestine that jeopardized Palestinians’ work and economic opportunities; British conscription of railroad workers from Egypt (the railroad was the largest industry at the time); and the formation of the Histadrut—the General Federation of Workers in Israel—which adopted a Zionist labor agenda and pressed Jewish and British employers to hire Jews only. The Histadrut also blocked the creation of a non-Zionist Palestinian-Jewish union, thus cementing a Zionist hold over Palestine’s industries. Seeking to control their own fate and protect their livelihoods, Palestinian workers established PAWS, an independent unified workers union.2

The Workers’ Bloc of the Palestine Communist Party, recognized in 1924 by the International Communist Party, also played an integral part in organizing Palestinian Workers during that time. However, it initially encouraged Palestinian workers to join the Histadrut’s Arab section, the Palestine Labor League, created in the 1930s. Palestinian workers insisted on organizing independently against the Zionist agenda, however. The Communist Party then endorsed PAWS,3 making it the most important Palestinian labor union for nearly a decade.4

Zionist settlers’ expansion left rural Palestinian farming communities (much of the Palestinian population at the time) without livelihoods and food to eat. Those same farmers who then sought industrial employment were exploited, underpaid, and/or completely excluded from the job market monopolized by Jewish Zionists. The British administration also disproportionately hired Jewish contractors, limiting Palestinian Arab employment.5

Since its inception, the Palestinian labor movement has fought two simultaneous, intersecting battles: one for national liberation from Zionist settler colonization, and another for ordinary labor rights and protections. Increased workers’ consciousness among Palestinians in response to the Zionist takeover of their land played a primary role in defining and propelling the Palestinian national struggle for freedom and autonomy at the time. This then fertilized the ground for additional unionization, laying the cornerstone for today’s trade unions.6

PAWS was not always able to live up to its objectives but boasted a few successes during this time period of great change. Additional trade unions and workers’ associations emerged, including factional splits from the larger unions, but most of them eventually dissolved or were absorbed into the larger PAWS.7

Though most union organizing occurred in coastal cities like Haifa and Jaffa, Jerusalem was a regional center for unions in central Mandatory Palestine. Its branches defined the national labor movement, representing thousands of workers in diverse industries. Additionally, Jerusalemites were always present at national conferences such as the General Conference of Palestine Arab Workers in Haifa in 1930, which was the first and largest gathering of unions in Palestine, organized by PAWS and the Palestine Communist Party. There were 61 participants, mostly elected by the workers themselves, and representing all strands of the Palestinian labor movement at the time.8

Under Jordanian control after 1948, many trade unions in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem—such as those for carpenters, blacksmiths, and other industries—held elections, operated offices, and served Palestinian workers.9 The Communist Party was the major driver for unionization in Jerusalem at the time, though many workers in the Israeli-controlled parts of the city were forced to join the Histadrut to obtain their labor rights.10

In Jordan, labor unionization was not yet legal. Jordanian workers attempted to organize repeatedly up until the early 1950s, to no avail. They only succeeded following the Jordanian takeover of the West Bank, where tens of Palestinian unions had been operating since the 1920s. The Palestinian unions that came under Jordanian control operated in secret and had a “push and pull” relationship with the Jordanian government. In 1952, when Amman adopted a new constitution, this paved the way for legislation regulating workers’ rights and labor union organization. As a result, the Jordanian authorities dissolved the existing Palestinian unions in the West Bank; and confiscated PAWS funds and properties. Its offices in Jericho, Ramallah, Jerusalem, and Amman were shut down.11 In 1953, Jordan passed a law permitting workers’ unions, thus opening the door for the establishment of new labor organizations.12

Once Israel occupied what now came to be known as East Jerusalem in 1967 and for the following two decades, Israel’s economy expanded rapidly, significantly boosted by the United States military and economic aid. This increased demand for cheap labor, which Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza—deprived of political rights or representation—could meet. Large numbers of Palestinians relied on employment in Arab Gulf states for a living, but the complicated geopolitical situation following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza made this more difficult. Palestinians could not move back and forth from Saudi Arabia, for example, since it was technically at war with Israel, which controlled all of the borders of historic Palestine. Thus, Palestinians were forced back to their own (minimal) economic resources. Tens of thousands of Palestinians resorted to working day jobs in Israel, where wages were threefold those in the West Bank. Israel’s construction and agricultural sectors relied heavily on cheap Palestinian laborers, including those employed without a permit (known as “black market” laborers). In 1985, 40,000 Palestinians from Gaza and 50,000 Palestinians from the West Bank held permits to work in Israel.13

These black market workers were not eligible to join Palestinian nor Israeli unions. Ghassan Khatib, Palestinian Authority (PA) minister of labor from 2002 to 2005 and a member of the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Talks (a precursor to the Oslo Accords), explained to Jerusalem Story that these workers’ rights were nonexistent. Palestinian labor unions were unable to organize these workers and protect their rights, nor were they eligible for organizing under Israeli frameworks. Consequently, there was massive exploitation of Palestinian black market workers in Israeli workplaces.14

At the same time, the illegal labor market saved the Israeli economy millions in underpaid labor and unpaid social benefits for Palestinians. In fact, Palestinian black market laborers became sought after over Israeli workers, who required employers to pay social benefits in accordance with the law.15

Israeli business owners and entrepreneurs also subcontracted with Palestinian employers who employed women and children at job sites within the West Bank. This way, the Israeli employers didn’t need to provide them with the benefits required by Israeli law, placing any responsibilities for workers with the Palestinian workshop owner. The persistent mistreatment manifested in increased working-class consciousness among Palestinians and the re-emergence of workers’ unions. These unions helped protect workers from unemployment, advocated and negotiated for better work conditions in Palestinian workplaces, supported workers in obtaining compensation for workplace accidents, and provided them with social benefits such as health insurance and medical care at reduced rates.16

Labor unions were paramount in organizing the public during the First Intifada, which began in December 1987. Through declarations, public statements, and financial resources, unions energized the Palestinian people’s resilience during the popular uprising. They played an important role in organizing strikes, guiding the public through hardships, expressing Palestinians’ hope for independence and an end to the occupation, and directing the national movement’s compass toward the people’s desires.17 Unions’ patriotic and resistance activity were amplified during the First Intifada, leading up to the negotiations and Oslo Accords in the early 1990s.

Ziad Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights, described the closure of unions in Jerusalem as a consequence of agreements with Israel. The “Oslo [Accords] were bad, and those who worked on Oslo say it is bad. But the worst thing about Oslo is the matter of Jerusalem,” he said.

Hammouri explained that the Oslo Accords signed in 1994 between Israel and the PLO indefinitely delayed a final status agreement on Jerusalem and its control, along with agreements on borders, water, settlement, and all other aspects not engaged in the first sets of signed agreements. Meanwhile, the accords included no preventive measures prohibiting Israel from settling the land further and thereby altering the reality or harming East Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. Everything in the agreement allowed Israel to do as it pleases, “which is why we’re seeing these shutdowns. All the shutdowns today are because of Oslo,” says Hammouri.

The sole guarantor of the Oslo Accords was the United States, which now evades its responsibility to be a fair arbiter. “The biggest turning point [for Jerusalem’s Palestinian unions] was Oslo,” said Hammouri.

Ghassan Khatib, on the other hand, said that in his view, “it’s a coincidence that an Israeli attack on Palestinian unions started after Oslo.” The closure and targeting of Palestinian institutions, including unions, after Oslo,

Prior to Oslo, however, Khatib says that the relationship between Palestinian unions and Israelis was never collaborative or one of negotiations. Rather, there was continued “collision and conflict.” Israel was aware of labor unions’ defining role in the Palestinian national movement and approached them with cruelty and an iron grip. Though Palestinian unions were not inherently nationalist, as their main battle was obtaining labor rights from Palestinian employers, they did make use of their members to bring together thousands of Palestinians to organize against the Israeli occupation.18 Unions’ interaction with Israel often turned violent, with police arresting, restricting, and interfering with union activity.

Although the Oslo Accords permitted Palestinians to hold national elections across the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, Israel quickly banned the newly established Palestinian Authority from operating within the city’s Israeli-determined boundaries.19 A 1994 law was passed by the Israeli Knesset after the Oslo I Agreement was signed to ensure the agreement’s implementation. Partly as a result, tens of Palestinian institutions have been shut down, outlawed, or pushed out of the Israeli municipality boundaries and forced to relocate (see Institutional Capacity).20 Right-wing Israeli governments have succeeded in arbitrarily linking many Palestinian institutions with the PA, thereby legitimizing the erasure of all things Palestine and Palestinian from Jerusalem. Khatib notes the stark contrast between the government of Yitzhak Rabin, who signed the Oslo Accords and was later assassinated, and the subsequent Benjamin Netanyahu-led administrations. The latter were much more against coexistence and found all manner of ways to delay implementing Oslo, even shutting all doors to future negotiations out of their adamant opposition to allowing anything that might lead to a future Palestinian state emerging alongside Israel within historic Palestine.

Since Jerusalem was a center for the most prominent and largest Palestinian unions—those also politically active, like the Union of Jerusalem District Electric Company’s Workers (est. 1954) and the General Union of Workers in Hotels, Restaurants, and Cafés in Jerusalem (est. 1965), Israel concentrated its efforts on the city’s union headquarters and intensified arrests, closures, and restrictions. This ultimately served Israel’s de-Palestinization of Jerusalem to make way for an Israeli Jewish capital, pushing most unions out of the city and into Ramallah or other Palestinian cities elsewhere in the West Bank.21

Nevertheless, a few Palestinian unions continued to operate in East Jerusalem, holding meetings, union elections, and providing services to Palestinian workers with Israeli permanent-resident IDs who work within areas under PA jurisdiction—for instance, in Ramallah. The most prominent union entities today are the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, located on Salah al-Din Street in East Jerusalem, and a few others that operate from the Professional Unions Complex in Beit Hanina—the Doctors’ Union, the Bar Association (involving lawyers), and the Engineers’ Union.22

Still, there is increasing pressure on even these unofficial Palestinian representatives.

In April 2025, Israeli authorities called Fawzi Sha‘ban, Secretary of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions branch in Jerusalem, to the group’s office on Salah al-Din Street and ambushed him upon his arrival, detaining him at the Russian Compound (al-Moskobiyya) because of his union activity. The soldiers also hung a military closure order on the union’s office doors, as is typically done to Palestinian institutions, shutting down the entire office in “an escalating campaign targeting national institutions in the city.”23

On July 6, 2025, the Palestinian Bar Association, founded in 1997,24 held council elections at its two main offices in Jerusalem and Gaza, electing Fadi Abbas, a Palestinian Jerusalemite lawyer and long-term member of the council. On July 29, only 19 days later, he was summoned by the Israeli intelligence agency for questioning on his relationship with the PA and political affiliation to Fatah. Following the interrogation, he was given an order prohibiting the Palestinian Bar Association from operating within Jerusalem’s boundaries.25

Hammouri told Jerusalem Story that Israeli authorities are constantly investigating Palestinian institutions to find pretexts for wielding discriminatory legal actions. Once there is any hint of an organization’s affiliation with Fatah, the main faction that makes up the PLO and the PA, Israeli authorities crack down on that organization. Utilizing the Israeli 2016 Anti-Terrorism Law, Israel formalized an unwritten procedure of criminalizing any affiliation to Palestinian political parties in East Jerusalem, even applying the law to non-political cultural institutions (including children’s soccer matches and puppet shows) and labeling them “terrorist.”26

Fifteen other Palestinian Jerusalemite lawyers have since been summoned for questioning due to their participation in bar association elections. Most Jerusalemite lawyers today work in the PA court system, while a much smaller, but growing, number study law in Israeli universities and then practice law in Israeli courts. Abbas practices law under the PA legal system and has his own private law practice in Ramallah. In cases like his, lawyers holding Israeli permanent resident IDs are entitled to (and incentivized to obtain) legal protections, union benefits, memberships, subsidies, and rights protection from the Palestinian Bar Association, since they are not  eligible for them in the Israeli system.27

The Professional Unions Complex in Beit Hanina was raided again on August 29, 2025, the day that Doctors’ Union elections were to take place. Israeli forces forced their way into the offices ahead of the election, shuttered the doors, and arrested doctor Sameer Mtour. The electoral event was delayed by at least three hours before eventually being moved to al-‘Izariyya, A Palestinian town just outside of the Israeli municipal boundaries of Jerusalem.28

Each event shutdown has been ordered and signed by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who is on a mission to outlaw Palestinian organizational activity in Jerusalem. These intimidation tactics are designed to censor expressions of national belonging. Israel considers these groups a threat to its sovereignty and security, especially in the city—Israel’s self-proclaimed capital. Because workers’ unions have been part of the fabric of Palestinian national organizing from its early days, affirming the Palestinian right to determination and national expression, they are being systematically eliminated.

Today, the labor movement in Jerusalem is “very weak because Israel has waged a war against Palestinian unions,” said Khatib. Most have been expelled from the city, and those remaining play a marginal role. The dismantling of the Palestinian labor movement in East Jerusalem—the region’s stronghold—had a ripple effect on unions across the West Bank, severely weakening the labor movement across the region.29