Bethlehem - Ma'an - Alaa Kanaan - Palestinian worker Fadi Bani Odeh, 35, did not know what would happen to him after the events of October 7 last year, after Israel closed the crossings between it and the West Bank, stopped work permits for Palestinian workers, and expelled workers from the Gaza Strip working for it to the West Bank. Before the closure of the crossings, Bani Odeh's life was going on at a regular pace. He would go to work in an Israeli factory in "Israel". Today, he sits at home staring at the walls of his room, thinking about an unknown future. He said that he expected the ban to continue for two weeks or a month until the end of the war on Gaza, but the war has not ended yet. Since that day, Bani Odeh has been living in a state of confusion, fear and discontent with the local Palestinian reality. He has become unemployed and cannot meet the needs of his family. You see him searching for work and sometimes you see him clinging to the hope of returning to work in the Israeli market. His cas e is similar to that of the worker Murad Imad, 50 years old, who was working in the Israeli market, committed to paying financial checks to buy an apartment in Nablus, which negatively affected his various financial obligations, and he has accumulated debt since the beginning of the closure of the crossings, which has had a financial impact even on the Palestinian market, and has caused a general lack of purchasing. Fadi and Imad are among 200,000 Palestinian workers who lost their jobs and steady income due to the closure of the crossings, making it difficult to meet their basic needs. According to Shaher Saad, Secretary-General of the General Federation of Palestinian Workers' Unions, these workers used to obtain regular or diverse work permits, and daily wages, according to the Israeli Central Bank, ranged between 50 and 55 million shekels per day, which led to a decline in spending and a decrease in trade activity in the Palestinian economy. Saad pointed out that even if workers had savings, they had ex hausted them during the ten months of the crisis, indicating that the income of workers in the Palestinian Authority and the private sector is estimated at about 800 million shekels per month, while the income of workers in the Israeli market reaches 1 billion and 350 million shekels. According to the figures, the losses are huge, as the national income has decreased at the present time, stressing that 90% of the workers did not benefit from any assistance programs and some of them tried to return to work in the Israeli market without work permits and under the name of exceptional permits. The economic expert and lecturer at An-Najah National University, Dr. Nael Mousa, comments that there are no fixed estimates of the economic losses incurred by the Palestinian market, and the loss does not lie in the cessation of workers, but in the impact on different sectors. The workers were creating a large economic movement, and the 'shekel' currency was going through more than one economic cycle and contributing to stimulating the economy. This coincided with the shadow of the financial crisis that the Palestinian Authority is going through as a result of the piracy of Palestinian tax revenues (clearance) by 'Israel.' Musa says, the economic bleeding cannot be treated unless the wound stops. The current circumstances do not allow for the construction of economic policies unless the wound stops. He points out that the coming days will reveal the future economic pattern because it is linked to the political pattern after the end of the war. According to data and analysis by the International Labor Organization and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the war in the Gaza Strip has caused unprecedented devastation to the labor market and the Palestinian economy in general, with real GDP shrinking by 83.5% in the Gaza Strip and 22.7% in the West Bank over the past eight months, leading to a 32.8% contraction in real GDP in Palestine as a whole. As of October 7, 2023, according to the International Labor Organizat ion, unemployment in the West Bank stood at 32% and in the Gaza Strip at 79.1%, bringing the average unemployment rate in Palestine to 50.8%. However, these figures do not take into account those who have left the labor force due to lack of job opportunities, meaning that the actual number of unemployed is higher than the unemployment figures indicate. Source: Maan News Agency