Palestinians Call For Escalation Across West Bank

Palestinians call for escalation, protest death of mass terrorist in Israeli prison

Times Of Israel

Hundreds of Palestinians, including dozens of masked gunmen firing into the air, took to the streets and stores shuttered across the West Bank Tuesday to protest the death of a Palestinian terrorist, convicted of murdering several Israelis, who died of cancer while serving time in an Israeli prison.

Palestinian factions called for a general strike and urged people to confront Israeli troops after Nasser Abu Hmeid died of lung cancer.

Abu Hmeid, 51, was a founding member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade terror group, the armed wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party. He had been serving multiple life sentences since 2002 after being convicted in the deaths of seven Israelis during the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel in the early 2000s.

Prisoners held by Israel, including those convicted of murdering Israeli civilians, are widely seen as heroes in Palestinian society for allegedly resisting Israeli military control of the West Bank, which is now in its 55th year. Israel and much of the West consider them terrorists.

Hundreds of people joined a march in honor of Abu Hmeid in Ramallah, the seat of Abbas’s government. Demonstrators hoisted Palestinian flags and yellow Fatah flags, while others held posters of Abu Hmeid next to Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A group of black-clad gunmen marched through the city, firing into the air.

Shopkeepers in Ramallah, Nablus, Hebron and Bethlehem closed their businesses, while schools sent students home and protesters gathered in several areas of the West Bank.

A demonstration was also held in the Gaza Strip, ruled by terror group Hamas.

Palestinian officials blamed Israel for Abu Hmeid’s death. PA Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh accused Israel of “deliberate medical negligence.”