Palestinians in West Bank Hold General Strike, Protests Against Israeli Death Penalty Law

West Bank, MINA – Palestinian shops and public institutions, including universities, across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem were closed on Wednesday as people took to the streets to protest against a new Israeli law that imposes the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks, Al Jazeera reported.

Hundreds of people gathered to march in Ramallah against the law backed by Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, chanting slogans condemning the legislation and calling on the international community to reverse its passage.

At a protest in the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank, demonstrators carried signs warning that time was running out. “Stop the law to execute prisoners, before it’s too late,” one sign read, showing an animation of a prisoner wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh scarf next to a noose.

Most shops in the cities of Hebron, Ramallah, and Nablus were closed with their shutters down at midday, journalists reported. Israeli soldiers forced Palestinian shop owners taking part in the strike in the town of Anata, northeast of Jerusalem’s Old City, to open their businesses.

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The Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party had called for a general strike the previous day.

At the Ramallah protest, Riman, a 53-year-old psychologist from Ramallah, told AFP that “there isn’t a single person standing here who doesn’t have a brother, a husband, a son, or even a neighbor in prison. There is no Palestinian family without a prisoner.”

“Honestly, today we feel a lot of anger, because there is also a real weakness in solidarity with them. The occupation [Israel] is betting on the weakness of the street,” said Riman, declining to share her last name.

Under the new law, passed in the Israeli parliament or Knesset late on Monday, Palestinians in the West Bank convicted by military courts of carrying out deadly attacks classified as “terrorism” will face the death penalty as a default sentence. Because Palestinians in the territory are automatically tried in Israeli military courts, the measure effectively creates a separate and harsher legal track.

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United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has condemned the law, saying “its applications to residents of the occupied Palestinian territory would constitute a war crime.”

On social media, Palestinians shared images of tires being burned in protest of the law at the Qalandia checkpoint, one of the West Bank’s busiest entry points into Israel via Jerusalem. Eyewitnesses reported that Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades, and tear gas at the protesters, according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA. No injuries were reported.

More than 9,500 Palestinians are held in Israeli prisons, including 350 children and 73 women. Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups say detainees face torture, starvation, and medical neglect, leading to dozens of deaths.[]

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)

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