Palestinians from the West Bank are holding a general strike on Monday calling for an end to the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Closed storefronts seem to line the empty streets in the eastern neighbourhood of Jerusalem and throughout Judea and Samaria.
“I walked through the city today and didn’t find a single open space,” Fadi Saadi, a shopkeeper in Beit Lehem, shared with AFP, a French news agency.
A coalition of Palestinian political movements, including rivals Fatah and Hamas, organised the strike to protest against what has been described as “genocide and massacre of our people.”
Protesters called for a strike “in all occupied Palestinian territories, in refugee camps … and among those who support our cause.”
“We are closing today because of our families and children in the Gaza Strip,” Imad Salman, 68, who owns a souvenir shop in Jerusalem’s Old City, said. “In Jerusalem, in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria – Today in Israel), we can’t do anything more than what we are doing here and now.”
In eastern Jerusalem’s usually busy Salaheddin shopping street is empty.
“This strike is a sign of solidarity with Gaza and what is happening there and the war that is being waged against the Palestinian people by (US President Donald) Trump, (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, the Israeli government or the American government,” A Palestinian man, who preferred not to be named, said. “This war must stop. The killing and destruction must stop and peace must prevail. Only peace and nothing but peace.”
Palestinian journalist killed in Gaza
Meanwhile, prominent Palestinian reporter Ahmed Mansour was hospitalised after an Israeli strike on a tent with journalists near Khan Younis hospital in the Gaza Strip, Aljazeera reported. According to the publication, he suffered severe burns to his body. Mansour’s condition is assessed as serious.
Several other media representatives were injured. The tent with journalists caught fire due to the airstrike and people tried to extinguish it on their own.
Last December, the Israeli military struck a car that belonged to the Quds News Network satellite television channel. At least five Palestinian journalists were killed as a result. The IDF, however, claimed that the strike targeted a vehicle belonging to members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement.
