GAZA CITY — Merchants across the Gaza Strip closed their shops yesterday in a half-day strike to protest against Israel’s blockade of the Hamas-ruled territory, an AFP correspondent said.
Meanwhile, local Palestinian media sources and medics reported that three Palestinian civilians were killed when the Israeli tanks positioned at the eastern Biet Hanoun town opened fire toward them in the north of the Gaza Strip. Two others were wounded in the shelling.
The sources said that an Israeli surface-to-surface missile targeted a group of civilians in the area, resulted in killing them on the spot. The Israeli military confirmed the missile attack, but said it targeted Palestinian militants on their way to fire mortar shells at Israel.
The general strike, called by the Popular Committee Against the Siege (PCAS), a politically independent group headed by Palestinian parliamentarian Jamal Al-Khudari, was to be part of a day of international events and demonstrations. “Our message is clear, and it is to break the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip and to motivate the Arab and Islamic and international community on the official and popular level,” Khudari told AFP.
The group says it has organized protests and other activities in more than 90 cities across the world and has called on international participants to switch off their lights for 30 minutes after sundown in a show of solidarity.
Hundreds of protesters, including representatives from Hamas and Gaza’s other main political movements, gathered in Gaza City’s Kuteiba Square to lay the cornerstone of a memorial to victims of the blockade. From there demonstrators marched to the United Nations headquarters where Khudari presented a letter addressed to UN chief Ban Ki-moon on the impact of the blockade.
In another development, for the third time in 10 days, a senior Hamas delegation crossed into Egypt yesterday to discuss the tenuous situation on the Gaza border, while top Egyptian security officials warned against any threats to the frontier. The six-person Hamas delegation, led by senior Gaza Hamas officials Mahmoud Zahar and Said Siyam, crossed into Egypt from Rafah terminal to meet Egyptian security officials in nearby El-Arish, a security official familiar with the discussions said.
Egyptian officials repeated warnings to Hamas to stay away from the border and not even think of reopening it by force as they did on Jan. 23, when explosives blew several holes in the frontier and sent hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Egypt to shop for supplies.
