The New York Times reports:

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel stopped work for the day on Tuesday, as did other Palestinians across the occupied West Bank and in Gaza, protesting violence against Arab Israelis, the unfolding Israeli military campaign targeting Hamas militants in Gaza and the looming eviction of several families from their homes in East Jerusalem.

Streets were deserted in Arab areas across both Israel and the occupied territories, as shopkeepers shuttered stores along the waterfront in Jaffa, in central Israel; the steep roads of Umm el-Fahm, an Arab town in northern Israel; and West Bank cities such as Hebron, Jenin, Nablus and Ramallah.

Demonstrators gathered instead in central squares, waving Palestinian flags, listening to speeches and chanting against Israeli policies. Outside Ramallah, a group of Palestinians who had gathered separately from the protesters set fires on a major thoroughfare and later exchanged gunfire with Israeli soldiers, officials said.

Since hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948, they have been divided not only by geography, but also by lived experience.

They were scattered across Gaza, the West Bank and the wider Middle East, as well as the state of Israel itself. Some struggled under differing forms of military occupation, while others were given Israeli citizenship — diluting their common identity.

But on Tuesday, they came together in a general strike to protest their shared treatment by Israel, in what many Palestinians described as a rare show of political unity. [Continue reading…]

Middle East Eye reports:

“Hundreds” of Palestinian citizens of Israel have received WhatsApp messages from their Israeli employers firing them from their jobs after participating in a general strike on Tuesday that was adhered to by millions of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories and Israel.

Middle East Eye (MEE) has seen tens of messages in Hebrew by Palestinian workers who informed their Israeli employers that they would not be attending work on Tuesday due to the general strike, only to receive messages shortly afterwards informing them that they were fired. [Continue reading…]