Ramallah – After Dr. Mohammed Al-Osaibi was killed by Israeli police on Saturday at the entrance to Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinian villages throughout Israel conducted a nationwide strike and day of mourning on Sunday.
Employees from the Arab public school system, Arab local government shops, and other institutions participated in the walkout.
Protests were concentrated in the Galilee, the Triangle, and the Negev. Al-Osaibi, a Bedouin from the southern Israeli settlement of Hura, was shot dead early on Saturday morning in front of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem.
Several protesters carried images of Al-Osaibi, waved Palestinian flags, and carried signs denouncing the incident during rallies that were held in the cities of Hura, Tamra, and Araba.
Suhail Diab, the mayor of Tamra in the Galilee, claimed the attack was meant to convey that the assassination was “a criminal operation against a doctor who was slain in cold blood by Israeli police gunfire under false pretences.”
According to Diab, Israeli police statements that Al-Osaibi attempted to take a police officer’s gun and that the location where the incident occurred had no operational surveillance cameras, as well as their assertions that police body cameras had malfunctioned, were untrue.
He told Arab News: “Israel must accept that it killed him in cold blood. It is incomprehensible that a doctor, who finished his study outside the country and returned to serve his country, was carrying guns and firing.”
Together with other Arab local authority leaders, he also urged European nations not to accept Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, two far-right Israeli ministers.
Prior to the start of Al-funeral, Osaibi’s Habis Al-Atawneh, leader of Hura council in the Negev, spoke of the “great indignation” felt by residents of the town.
The administration of President Joseph Biden has been urged to intervene by the Palestinian community in the US to defend Palestinian worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Additionally, it urged that Israeli authorities be pressured to uphold the mosque’s sanctity in letters to members of Congress.
Omar Abdin, a 23-year-old Palestinian activist associated with Hamas in Jerusalem, was detained on Sunday, according to a statement from the Israeli intelligence service Shin Bet. He was allegedly planned to use a gun to assault an Israeli police bus.
Abdin is alleged by the Shin Bet and police to have been an activist in Birzeit University’s Hamas student organisation.
