Palestinians launch strike to protest Israel’s killing of Palestinian doctor – Middle East Monitor
Palestinians across Arab cities in Israel launched a day-long strike yesterday to protest the Israeli killing of Mohammad Al-Osaibi, a Palestinian doctor who was fatally shot by Israeli forces.
Al-Osaibi, a 26-year-old doctor from Houra, a Bedouin Arab village in southern Israel, was killed by Israeli police forces at the entrance to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied city early Saturday.
The family said Al-Osaibi was shot when he intervened to help a Palestinian girl.
The strike followed a call on Saturday by the High Follow-up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel which includes all municipalities to close public education facilities and shops.
The chairman of the committee, former MK Mohammad Barakeh, told Army Radio yesterday: “This is not a case of conflicting versions – there is a regime body that killed a citizen in cold blood. The burden of proof is on the police.”
Barakeh added that the strike was taking place in almost all Arab areas and that there would be no violence unless the police “provoke,” the Times of Israel reported.
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In addition, Ahmad Tibi, a Palestinian-Israeli member of the Knesset, visited the Al-Osaibifamily mourning tent in the Bedouin town of Hura, located in the Negev (Naqab), after the strike was announced.
He said, “Mohammad Al-Osaibi is a medical school graduate who came to the Al-Aqsa Mosque to pray. He had dreams, they were destroyed by the bullets of the trigger-happy police who think that the lives of Palestinian Arabs are free.”
Israeli soldiers claim he tried to shoot an officer after he stopped being questioned, prompting forces to shoot. However, Al-Osaibi’s family denied the police version of events.
“The police are lying,” the family said in a statement. “They hit him with more than 20 bullets when he had nothing in his possession.”
In recent months, tensions have continued throughout the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, amid repeated Israeli raids on Palestinian towns.
Over 90 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the beginning of the year, according to Palestinian figures. Fourteen Israelis were also killed during the same period.
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