RAMALLAH: A general strike and day of mourning was on Sunday observed in Palestinian towns throughout Israel following Saturday’s killing by Israeli police of Dr. Mohammed Al-Osaibi at the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The strike involved workers from Arab local authority shops, the Arab public education system, and other facilities.
Galilee, the Triangle, and the Negev were at the center of protests. Al-Osaibi, from Hura — a Bedouin village in southern Israel — was shot dead at the entrance to Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem early on Saturday.
Protests were organized in the towns of Hura, Tamra, and Araba with dozens of demonstrators carrying pictures of Al-Osaibi, waving Palestinian flags, and displaying slogans condemning the incident.
Mayor of Tamra, in Galilee, Suhail Diab, said the strike aimed to send a message that the killing constituted “a criminal operation against a doctor who was killed in cold blood by Israeli police bullets under false pretexts.”
Diab rejected what he said were Israeli police claims that Al-Osaibi had tried to grab an officer’s gun and that there were no working security cameras in the area where the incident took place, adding that they also claimed that police body cameras had not worked.
He told Arab News: “It is inconceivable that a doctor — who completed his education outside the country and returned to serve his country — was carrying weapons and firing, and Israel must admit that it killed him in cold blood.”
And he joined Arab local authority leaders in urging European countries not to receive far-right Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Habis Al-Atawneh, head of Hura council in the Negev described the “extreme anger” felt by people in the town prior to the start of Al-Osaibi’s funeral.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian community in the US has called for the intervention of President Joe Biden’s administration to protect Palestinian worshippers in Al-Aqsa Mosque. And in messages to members of Congress, it demanded that Israeli authorities be pressed to respect the sanctity of the mosque.
On Sunday, the Israeli Shin Bet security agency announced that 23-year-old Omar Abdin, a Palestinian activist affiliated with Hamas in Jerusalem, had been arrested for allegedly planning to carry out a gun attack on a bus transporting Israeli police.
The Shin Bet and police claim Abdin was an activist in the student wing of Hamas at Birzeit University.