Yesterday you could barely buy a shawarma in Palestine. And that includes East Jerusalem, the Arab sector of the city, where virtually all activities were paralyzed as a result of the 24-hour "global" general strike to protest the Israeli slaughter in Gaza and demand an immediate ceasefire. Banks, shops, restaurants, schools... everything stopped, except for some taxis and intercity buses and the hotels that remain open despite the absence of tourists.
The streets of West Bank cities such as Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin or Hebron, where the traffic jams are hellish, were empty, much more than on a Friday - a public holiday -, except in the center, where there were demonstrations. At noon, this special envoy was able to observe barricades with burning containers at the exit from Ramallah, a fact that foreshadowed that when night and morning arrived the atmosphere could be hot in some areas, despite the arrival of the cold winter
The main access to Jerusalem from Ramallah, the Kalandia check point, offered an unprecedented appearance yesterday, with only a handful of cars waiting for the rigorous control of Israeli soldiers. Already in the disputed Old City, the police device to enter through the Damascus Gate was strong due to the forecast of riots, despite the fact that the Muslim quarter was empty and not even some food and clothing stalls that open even on Fridays they raised the blinds. Only some street vendor was trying to earn a few shekels in East Jerusalem to support the economic stagnation that the city is experiencing without the foreign visitors, usual in the pre-Christmas period.
The strike was a success in the occupied territories and also had a large following in other Arab countries where Palestinian refugees live, such as Lebanon and Jordan, where traders in Beirut and Amman also stood in solidarity with Palestine to stop the slaughter, which yesterday raised the macabre counter to 18,205 dead – a third of whom were minors – and 49,645 injured.
"We hope that everyone will join the strike, which takes place in the context of a broad international movement that opposes the open genocide in Gaza, ethnic cleansing and colonial settlements in the West Bank," said a statement from the National and Islamic Forces, the entity that called the strike, which brings together all political parties and other Palestinian social movements, including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The war in Gaza has amalgamated all the formations, ideologies and religious creeds of Palestine, be they secular Fatah or Islamist Hamas, which were previously divided.
The label
However, the strike went unnoticed in Israel, where the media barely mentioned it. Until last night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not referred to it, another sign that the two communities live back to back, especially after the terrorist attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli response.
The general strike did not stop the bombings or the fighting. The army still insists on mass evacuations in the south of the Gaza Strip and wants most of them to be concentrated in Al-Mawasi, a small Bedouin town by the sea, west of Khan Iunis, the epicenter of the fighting. The United Nations and humanitarian organizations insist there is no safe place in the strip.
Regarding the videos of alleged arrested fighters, Israel assured yesterday that the army and the interior secret service have already arrested "more than 500 terrorists members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad" in the strip, who are being "interrogated". However, he did not say where they have been taken, or whether they were arrested while fighting as part of the armed arms of those movements or if they are civilians he considers sympathizers of the two Palestinian political parties.
Meanwhile, the flogging of Hizbullah in northern Israel and the consequent Israeli response do not stop. Yesterday, a 75-year-old man died in the Lebanese town of Taiba, after a projectile hit his house. As for the northern border, the White House yesterday warned Israel that the US-supplied white phosphorus munitions can only be used to illuminate battlefields and not to attack people, after The Washington The Post reported that in October the Israeli army injured nine people with this substance in an attack in southern Lebanon.
