Palestinians go on strike as Israel, Hamas trade fire
Gaza City (Gaza Strip): A strike launched from Gaza killed two Thai workers in southern Israel on Tuesday, police said, hours after Israeli airstrikes toppled a six-story building in the Palestinian territory that housed bookstores and educational centres.
With the war between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers showing no sign of abating and truce efforts apparently stalled, Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territories went on strike in a rare collective action against Israel's policies.
Violence erupted at one protest on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah. Hundreds of Palestinians burned tires and hurled stones toward an Israeli military checkpoint. Troops fired tear gas canisters at the crowd and protesters picked up some of them and threw them back.
One protester was killed and 46 others wounded including 16 by live fire in clashes with Israeli troops, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. The Israeli army said two soldiers were wounded by gunshots to the leg. The general strike was an uncommon show of unity among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20% of its population, and those in the territories Israel seized in 1967 that the Palestinians have long sought for a future state.
It threatened to further widen the conflict after a spasm of communal violence in Israel and protests across the occupied West Bank last week.
Muhammad Barakeh, one of the organisers of the strike, said Palestinians are expressing a collective position against Israel's aggression in Gaza and Jerusalem, as well as the brutal repression by police across Israel.
Since the fighting began last week, the Israeli military has launched hundreds of airstrikes it says are targeting Hamas' militant infrastructure, while Palestinian militants have fired more than 3,400 rockets from civilian areas in Gaza at civilian targets in Israel. Heavy fighting broke out May 10 when Gaza's militant Hamas rulers fired long-range rockets toward Jerusalem in support of Palestinian protests against Israel's heavy-handed policing of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint site sacred to Jews and Muslims, and the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers. At least 213 Palestinians have been killed in airstrikes since, including 61 children and 36 women, with more than 1,440 people wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not break the numbers down into fighters and civilians.
Israeli attacks have damaged at least 18 hospitals and clinics and entirely destroyed one health facility, the World Health Organisation said in a new report.
