RAMALLAH: Shops, offices and schools were closed across the occupied West Bank on Thursday as Palestinians went on strike to protest Israel’s killing of a man suspected of a deadly attack against Israeli forces.

Udai Tamimi, who had been on the run since the fatal shooting this month of military policewoman Noa Lazar at a checkpoint in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, was killed late Wednesday after he fired at Israelis on the edge of a settlement.

With the West Bank largely shut down, the Palestinian health ministry also confirmed that Mohammad Fadi Nuri, 16, died from a gunshot wound sustained during clashes with Israeli forces near Ramallah last month.

Omar Abed al-Latif Omar, a resident of the West Bank city of Tulkarem, said the strike was intended as “a message” of solidarity with Tamimi. AFP journalists also saw shuttered shops in the West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Nablus, as well as Jerusalem’s Old City.

Violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has surged in recent months.

More than 100 Palestinian fighters and civilians have been killed since the start of the year, the heaviest toll in the West Bank for nearly seven years, according to the United Nations.

Tamimi was killed by a security guard after wounding another when he fired at the entrance to Maale Adumim, one of the largest Jewish settlements in the West Bank, Israeli police said. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid praised the security forces “for neutralising the terrorist” blamed for killing 18-year-old Lazar at the entrance to Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp.

The 10-day pursuit of Tamimi had resulted in closures affecting schools, health centres and other services in the camp that is home to thousands, and cla­shes between Israeli forces and Palestinians.

Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2022