Hundreds of unemployed workers in the Gaza Strip marked May Day on Saturday with protests against a three-year Israeli blockade imposed on the coastal enclave after it was seized by the Islamic Hamas movement in 2007, DPA reported.
Witnesses said the workers gathered near the border between northern Gaza Strip and Israel waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans that called on Israel to lift the blockade and end the closure of the commercial crossings.
The participants in the rally, organized by leftwing Palestinian groups, also condemned the current split between Gaza and the West Bank, and slammed the new taxes that Hamas government had recently imposed on the population.
Ramzi Rabah, a Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) leader called on the rival Hamas, and President Mahmoud Abbas Fatah party, to reunite and end their feuds that harmed the interests of the Palestinians.
The unemployed workers carried construction tools as a symbol of losing their jobs in Israel and in the Gaza Strip due to the lack of construction raw materials.
One of the workers said that he had been unemployed for more than three years, adding "around 150,000 workers in the Gaza Strip are now jobless."
The participants said that Hamas police prevented the workers protest from approaching the borderline area in fear of clashing with the Israeli soldiers.
According to official figures of the Palestinian Statistic Central Bureau, unemployed in the Gaza Strip had reached 40 percent, where 80 percent of 1.5 million people of the salient depend on humanitarian aid.
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