Israel’s main trade union centre called for a strike a general strike on Monday in reaction to the announcement on Sunday that six hostages were found dead by the army in the Gaza Strip after almost 11 months of conflict with Hamas.
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The remains of the hostages were found on Saturday “in an underground tunnel in the Rafah area” in the south of the Palestinian territory, said a military statement.
“Those who kill hostages do not want an agreement” for a truce in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, warning Hamas leaders: “We will hunt them down, we will catch them and we will settle accounts.”
But Netanyahu is under pressure and Israel’s Histadrut trade union centre has called a “general strike” to force the government to reach an agreement to release the hostages“As of tomorrow (Monday) at 6:00 a.m., the entire Israeli economy will be at a standstill,” said Histadrut chairman Arnon bar David.
Protesters chant slogans through megaphones during an anti-government rally calling for the release of Israelis held hostage in Gaza.
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As part of the strike, “all landings and takeoffs” at Israel’s main airport, Ben Gurion, will be halted from 8:00 a.m., the union leader said. “We have to stop the abandonment of the hostages (…) I have come to the conclusion that only our intervention can shake up those who need to be shaken up,” said David.
“We need an agreement, an agreement is more important than anything else,” said the union leader, who pointed out that Negotiations are not progressing due to “political” issues and that this is “unacceptable”.
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid and the families of the hostages also called for a strike.
The Israeli Ministry of Health reported that Autopsy results indicate the hostages died from close-range gunshot wounds between Thursday and Friday.
A senior Palestinian Islamist official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said several hostages had been killed “by gunfire and shelling by the Israeli occupiers” and that some of them were on the group’s list of people to be released in the first phase if a ceasefire agreement is reached.
Thousands of protesters raise flags and banners around symbolic coffins representing six Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered from the Gaza Strip, during an anti-government rally calling for the release of the captives held by Palestinian militants in Gaza since October, in Tel Aviv on September 1, 2024.
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US President Joe Biden said that among the bodies recovered was that of Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin and said he was “devastated” but remained optimistic about the possibility of a truce.
Goldberg-Polin, 23, was one of 251 hostages taken by Hamas militants in their Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza.
The other five hostages recovered were identified by the Israeli army as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Sergeant Ori Danino.
Dead in the West Bank
The Israeli army launched a major operation on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, with shelling and armored vehicle raids in Jenin, Nablus, Tubas, Tulkarem, and refugee camps, where armed groups fighting Israel have a strong presence.
According to the Palestinian Authority’s Health Ministry, the Israeli military has killed at least 24 Palestinians in the West Bank since Wednesday.
Israeli police said three of their officers, two men and a woman, were killed Sunday “in a shootout” following an attack at the Tarkumiya checkpoint near Hebron.
The Israeli army said in the afternoon that it had killed the attacker responsible for the shooting.
The attack was not claimed, but Hamas considered it “a natural response to the massacres against the Palestinian people.”
‘The best vaccine, peace’
In Gaza, despite the ravages of the war between Israeli forces and Hamas, a polio vaccination campaign has begun.
“It is absolutely necessary that they be vaccinated,” Ghadir Haji told AFP as the family waited in line for vaccinations at the clinic in the Al Zawayda refugee camp.
Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said in the afternoon that the campaign was a “success” with “thousands of children vaccinated.”
The World Health Organization said Israel had agreed to implement “humanitarian pauses” of at least three days in several parts of the country to facilitate the campaign.
Netanyahu, however, clarified that these “pauses” do not constitute “a ceasefire.”
The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that for the children of Gaza, “the best vaccine (…) is peace.”
The goal is to immunize more than 640,000 children under 10 years of age.
The war in Gaza, which has plunged the 2.4 million inhabitants of the territory into a catastrophic humanitarian situation, broke out on 7 October.
That day, Hamas Islamist militants killed 1,199 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.
In response, Israel vowed to destroy Hamas and launched a vast retaliatory offensive that has already left 40,738 dead in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
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