Palestinians in West Bank strike to demand end to Gaza war

AFP | Ramallah

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Shuttered storefronts lined empty streets in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank yesterday, as Palestinians held a general strike demanding an end to the Gaza war.

“I walked through the city today and couldn’t find a single place that was open,” Fadi Saadi, a shopkeeper in Bethlehem, told AFP. Shops, schools and most public administrative offices were closed across the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

A coalition of Palestinian political movements -- including rivals Fatah and Hamas -- called the strike to protest what they described as “the genocide and the ongoing massacre of our people”.

It called for the strike “in all the occupied Palestinian territories, in the refugee camps... and among those who support our cause”. Israel resumed air strikes on Gaza on March 18, ending nearly two months of ceasefire with Hamas. Dozens of Palestinians have been killed almost daily since Israel restarted its military offensive. “We close today about our family in Gaza, our children in Gaza,” said Imad Salman, 68, who owns a souvenir shop in Jerusalem’s Old City.

“In Jerusalem, in the West Bank, we can’t do something more than what we’re doing here now,” he told AFP.