A general strike has been called across Palestine, to remember the 11 people who were killed by Israeli forces in the city of Nablus yesterday. Among the dead are a 16-year-old boy and two elderly men. More than 100 people suffered gunshot wounds.
Undercover Israeli occupation forces entered the Old City of Nablus on foot at dawn on Wednesday dressed as religious Muslim men and veiled women and hid inside a mosque in the al-Halabeh quarter next to a house where two Palestinian resistance fighters were taking shelter.
The Israeli soldiers remained hidden inside the mosque until the morning, during which dozens of other soldiers took positions in and around the house and the neighbourhood, including snipers on rooftops, according to local residents.
The two fighters, Hossam Isleem, 24, and Mohammad Abdulghani (also known as Mohammad Jneidi), 23, who belonged to the Lions’ Den armed resistance group in Nablus, refused to surrender. A few minutes later, Israeli forces attacked the house with rocket-propelled grenades and armed drones, killing the men, according to residents.
Akram Saeed Antar, a resident of the al-Halabeh area where the targeted house was located, said Israeli soldiers were firing indiscriminately.
“It was at least three hours of destruction, explosions, and live ammunition that targeted all the residents in the area,” Antar said. “They killed elderly people, children, on the streets.”
“The resistance fighters had basic rifles, they cannot resist shells, missiles, and drones,” continued Antar.
People from all over the West Bank are participating in the strike today. People have closed their shops and businesses in mourning for the 11 people killed in Nablus. Schools in the West Bank and Gaza have announced that they will close for the day too.
Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes carried out strikes on the Gaza strip this morning, including on the al-Bureij refugee camp.
A massive escalation
Wednesday’s massacre is just the latest in a series of increasingly deadly raids on Palestinian cities. On 6 February, Israeli troops killed five Palestinians in Jericho’s Aqbat Jaber refugee camp. The attack on the camp followed a ten-day siege of the city.
On 26 January, an Israeli assault on a refugee camp in the city of Jenin killed nine people. Israeli soldiers attacked a hospital in the city. An elderly woman was among those murdered.
2022 was the most deadly year for Palestinians since the second Intifada (uprising) in the early 2000s. And Israel’s police, armed forces and colonists have already killed 61 people this year.
Israeli settlers have intensified their attacks on Palestinians. 144 such attacks were reported in one day in the Nablus area alone.
Electronic Intifada warned yesterday that:
According to some close observers, the new far-right government in Tel Aviv may be deliberately seeking a violent escalation to provide a pretext to implement its aims to formally annex West Bank land and further consolidate its colonial, apartheid rule.