Approximately 20,000 demonstrators gathered in Sakhnin on Tuesday, October 13, for a solidarity rally with the Palestinians in the occupied territories. “We’ve been warning for months that what they’re doing in Al-Aqsa will spark an intifada, and no one listened, and now everyone’s asking ‘what happened?’ You’re lying Mr. Netanyahu,” said the Chairman of Hadash and former MK Muhammad Barakeh.

The protest was organized by the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel as part of a general strike in the Arab sector on Tuesday that included schools, public institutions and businesses in Arab municipalities. Arab-Palestinian citizens in Israel went on strike Tuesday and promised more protests to come over the continued Israeli aggression in the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The High Follow-Up Committee said in a statement that “solidarity and protests” are necessary in the face of “fascist incitements” and attacks by members of the Israel’s government.

Young demonstrators who took part in Tuesday’s rally in Sakhnin (Photo: Sonara)

The decision to strike came at a meeting of the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel umbrella organization on Sunday. The meeting, held in the Arab town of Kafr Qara in northern Israel, explored various means of protest before calling the strike. The decision to call for a general strike was over what the committee called “the efforts by the Netanyahu government to separate Muslims from the al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Joint List Chairman MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) told a faction meeting on Monday evening that “the Arab public has a democratic right to speak out.” “We must collectively mobilize, all of us, for the success of the strike tomorrow, which will express our democratic and civil struggle,” said Odeh.

“The Israeli government thinks that you can manage the conflict – it cannot be managed under occupation,” he said. He called for negotiations to begin immediately to reach a peace agreement that will end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state. “The uprising and struggle against the occupation is natural and expected,” Odeh continued. However, he added, “We are against any civilian casualties,” and need to get the two peoples out of the “cycle of terrorism and bloodshed.”

Labor Chairman Yitzhak Herzog called on Tuesday for the extreme-right government to temporarily quell the flashpoint by prohibiting visits to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound. Herzog also said the government should impose a closure on the Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and fight what he called “online incitement” by Islamists. Herzog published these comments on Facebook.