Palestinians strike in East Jerusalem, West Bank, demanding end to war in Gaza

Shuttered storefronts line empty streets in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as Palestinians hold a general strike demanding an end to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

“I walked through the city today and couldn’t find a single place that was open,” Fadi Saadi, a shopkeeper in Bethlehem, tells AFP.

Shops, schools, and most public administrative offices are closed across the West Bank.

A coalition of Palestinian political movements — including rivals Fatah and Hamas — called the strike to protest what they described as “the genocide and the ongoing massacre of our people.”

It called for the strike “in all the occupied Palestinian territories, in the refugee camps… and among those who support our cause.”

“We close today because of our families in Gaza, our children in Gaza,” Imad Salman, 68, who owns a souvenir shop in Jerusalem’s Old City, says.

“In Jerusalem, in the West Bank, we can’t do anything more than we’re doing here now,” he tells AFP.

In East Jerusalem, the usually bustling commercial Salaheddin Street is empty.

“This strike is in solidarity with Gaza and what is happening there, and the war being waged against the Palestinian people, whether by (US President Donald) Trump, (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu, the Israeli government, or the American government,” Ahmed, who did not give his surname, says.

“This war must stop, the killing and destruction must stop, and only peace should prevail — peace, and nothing but peace.”