Thousands of Palestinian labourers held a sit-in protest at the main border crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a day after a man died in a queue waiting for security checks for workers entering Israel.
"We have the right to work in dignity without being humiliated," read a banner waved by labourers who blocked the Erez Crossing to protest against stringent Israeli security procedures.
A Palestinian construction worker, 41-year-old Mohammad al-Sheikh, collapsed and died a day earlier as he waited among a crowd of thousands of Palestinians in the early hours of the morning to enter Israel for work.
Around 17,000 Gazans file through the Erez Crossing every morning for work in Israel, where they earn about 200 shekels a day ($45), three times the amount they would earn in the Gaza Strip where unemployment is rife.

Copyright Reuters, 2004

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