Palestinians to stage general strike over inmate’s death

People across the Palestinian territories will join the strike on Wednesday, a day after the death of Maisarah Abu Hamdiah, a 64-year-old prisoner, who had been suffering from throat cancer.
 
Acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas has blamed the Israeli regime for refusing to grant Abu Hamdiah an early release.
 
Abbas said the death of Hamdiah showed the Tel Aviv regime’s “arrogance and intransigence over the prisoners.”
 
Abbas also stated that the Palestinian Authority had worked to get the prisoner released for treatment but the Israeli regime “refused to let him out, which led to his death.”
 
Nabil Abu Rudeina, Abbas’s spokesman, also said the regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was responsible for the death of the Palestinian prisoner.
 
Meanwhile, Salam Fayyad, the acting premier of the Palestinian Authority, also condemned Tel Aviv and called for an international inquiry into Hamdiah’s death.
 
On Tuesday, Palestinian prisoners in several Israeli jails protested the death of Abu Hamdiah.
 
People also demonstrated across the occupied West Bank. In the city of al-Khalil (Hebron), Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets at nearly 300 angry demonstrators. Three people were reportedly injured in another demonstration held in East al-Quds (Jerusalem).