The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in the 1948-Occupied Lands announced today that a one-day general strike will be observed across the Arab towns and cities in Israel tomorrow, Sunday, in protest of the cold-blooded murder last night by Israeli police of a Palestinian citizen of Israel in the Old City of Jerusalem. Mohammad Khaled al-Osaibi, 26, from the town of Hura in the Naqab desert, was shot and killed in cold blood by Israeli police around midnight while he was near Chain Gate, one of the gates leading into Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City. The Israeli police refused to publish CCTV footage documenting the lunching of al-Osaibi, although the police claimed that he was shot dead after trying to snatch a police officer’s rifles, a claim that was dismissed by eyewitnesses. The High Follow-Up Committee said at an emergency meeting in Hura that the strike will include all the municipalities and educational facilities in the Arab cities and towns in Israel. The Committee also called for massive turnout to the funeral of the slain Palestinian young man at his hometown of Hura, and called for rallies and vigils to be held in the Arab towns to express resentment at the Israeli forces’ use of lethal force against the defenseless Arab population. Arabs in today’s Israel are Palestinians who stayed on their land following the creation of the occupying state in 1948 and their descendants. They make up about 20 percent of the country’s nine million people. By law, their rights are equal to those of Jewish citizens. But in practice they suffer discrimination in employment, housing, policing and other essentials
Source: Palestine News & Information Agency