Israel’s labour court orders general strike to end earlier than organisers had planned
Israelâs labour court has ruled that the general strike must end at 14:30 local time (12:30 BST), according to court documents seen by Reuters. The strike â launched by Histadrut, Israelâs main trade union â was due to end at 18:00 local time (16:00 BST). We will give you more detail on the ruling as soon as we get it.
Key events
Two people were killed on Monday in an Israeli strike on a vehicle in southern Lebanon, according to the health ministry, with a Lebanese security source saying the car belonged to a UN-contracted company, AFP reports.
Hamas ally Hezbollah has exchanged near-daily cross-border fire with the Israeli army since the Palestinian group attacked Israel on October 7, triggering war in Gaza.
âThe Israeli enemyâs strike targeting a car in Naqura left two dead,â the health ministry said, without specifying whether they were civilians.
A security source, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the car âbelonged to a cleaning company under contract with the United Nations peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)â, deployed along the border with Israel.
Hezbollahâs Al-Manar television channel reported that the two dead in Naqura were civilians, while Lebanonâs official National News Agency (NNA) reported a drone strike on the Naqura road, without giving further details.
Israel’s labour court orders general strike to end earlier than organisers had planned
Israelâs labour court has ruled that the general strike must end at 14:30 local time (12:30 BST), according to court documents seen by Reuters. The strike â launched by Histadrut, Israelâs main trade union â was due to end at 18:00 local time (16:00 BST). We will give you more detail on the ruling as soon as we get it.
We reported earlier that the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) said in an advisory note on Monday that a merchant vessel had been hit by two unknown projectiles 70 nautical miles northwest of Yemenâs Saleef.
British maritime agencies have now reported that two ships, a Panama-flagged oil tanker and a merchant vessel, came under attack in the Red Sea off Yemen on Monday. No casualties were reported in either incident.
Military authorities confirmed the tanker was attacked with missiles, security firm Ambrey said. Maritime sources told Reuters the tanker was the Blue Lagoon I.
Ambrey âassessed that the vessel was targeted due to company affiliation with a vessel calling Israeli portsâ, it said.
In a second incident, a drone hit a merchant vessel about 50 nautical miles off Yemenâs Hodeidah, a Red Sea port just south of Saleef, Ambrey and UKMTO reported. The vessel is proceeding to its next port of call, UKMTO said.
‘Strike was not as powerful as people expected’ – dispatch from Tel Aviv
Julian Borger
Julian Borger is the Guardianâs world affairs editor
Tel Aviv this morning did not feel like a society about to bring its government down.
The debris had been removed from last nightâs demonstration on the Ayalon Highway, the motorway which passes through the city centre, and traffic was moving normally.
Protesters stopped traffic at a couple of junctions around the city but for the most part, the traffic flowed. The national rail line was working, though some buses and light railway lines stopped.
Private companies gave their staff the day off, but it was more in the spirit of some sombre holiday rather than the start of an existential struggle with the government.
Ben Gurion airport only closed for a few hours, and it was announced that the whole general strike would end at 6pm. It is not government-ending stuff.
The mood can best be described as bitterly realistic on Hostages Square, the name given to the plaza between the national library and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where hostage families and their supporters gather every day.
âIâm not sure the strike was as powerful as people expected,â said Debbie Mason, a social worker for the Eshkol regional council, the area of southern Israel abutting Gaza.
She made a distinction between what she hoped would happen and what she believed would happen, the latter being that nothing would change for the hostages.
âUnfortunately, there are too many things that are going to obstruct a deal, whether itâs on our side, whether itâs on Hamasâ side, it just doesnât seem to be in anyoneâs interest, that something should happen,â Mason said.
Rayah Karmin, who comes from Mabuâim, a village near Netivot, near the Gaza border, agreed that a one-day strike would change little.
âOnly a longer strike will make the people in government understand that the economy of Israel is going to go down,â Karmin, a vitamin supplement salesperson, said.
She pointed out that all the demonstrations and strikes were up against an immovable political fact. If a ceasefire is agreed, the far-right members of the coalition, notably Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, will walk out and the government will fall.
âSmotrich and Ben-Gvir will leave Netanyahu, and then he will be without a coalition, and he will have to go home,â Karmin said. âAnd he knows that next time he wonât be elected, so he wants to stay as long as he can.â
âBibi is a magician, a really big fucking magician,â Aaron, a 28-year-old legal adviser in a pharmaceutical corporation, said. He had been out on the streets for Sundayâs mass protests, but he had no illusions about who they were up against.
âIf thereâs a hostage deal, the government will fall, so they are not interested in a deal,â Aaron said. âWhat Ben-Gvir wants and what Smotrich wants, they get, because Bibi doesnât want to go to jail. He doesnât want to lose power, because Bibi will be voted out in the first election if the government falls.â
Here are some of the latest images from Israel coming out from the newswires:
Civil defence rescuers said an Israeli strike on Sunday killed 11 people at a school where Israelâs military claimed a Hamas command centre was based, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
An AFP correspondent reported some airstrikes overnight, with the civil defence agency saying artillery shelling hit Gaza City, where two people were killed when a missile hit a residential block.
Death toll in Gaza reaches 40,786, says health ministry
At least 40,786 Palestinian people have been killed and 94,224 injured in Israeli strikes on Gaza since 7 October, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Monday. The toll includes 48 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
The health ministry has said thousands of other dead people are most likely lost in the rubble of the enclave.
Anat Elbaz, a human resource manager at the Sartorius Company in Beit Haâemek, has organised a one-hour protest at Beit Haâemek Junction on Route 70 in northern Israel.
Elbaz told the Times of Israel that they held the protest in solidarity with the relatives of the Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas in Gaza. There are about 100 people waving Israel flags and posters of hostages.
âAll Israeli citizens are to be valued and we donât want the government to abandon its citizens,â Elbaz said.
Another company employee, Osnat Kalati, disagrees with those who âargue for total victoryâ for Israel in its war in Gaza as it lessen the likelihood of a ceasefire (Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must bring âabsolute victoryâ, which means eliminating Hamas, a complete dismantling of all their battalions, and destroying the entire underground tunnel network).
âBut if there is no ceasefire, it is obvious that no hostages will be released,â Kalati said.
This update on todayâs protest was posted by Haaretz, an Israeli media outlet, about 20 minutes ago:
Hundreds of protesters calling for a hostage deal are marching along Tel Avivâs Namir Road, heading toward the national defence headquarters.
Approximately 200 protesters are intermittently blocking traffic at a major intersection in Beâer Sheva in southern Israel, in a demonstration coordinated with the police.
In northern Israel, a protest is taking place near the town of Yokneam and in Haifa.
General strike in Israel to end at 6pm tonight, union chair confirms
Arnon Bar-David, the chair of Histadrut, Israelâs largest trade union, has said that the general strike will end at 6pm local time today (4pm BST), according to reports in Israeli media. The general strike started around 8am local time. Initially, the strike action was due to run into tomorrow morning.
Hamas’ armed wing claims responsibility for West Bank attacks
Hamasâ armed wing al-Qassasm brigades claimed responsibility for two attacks against Israelis in the occupied West Bank on Friday, the group has said in a statement.
Three Israelis were injured in two separate attacks in the occupied West Bank that occurred in the Karmei Tzur settlement and the Gush Etzion Junction near Hebron.
Israelâs foreign minister, Israel Katz, has said his country will ârespond with full forceâ after the discovery of the bodies of six hostages at the weekend who were taken in the 7 October attack by Hamas.
Katz wrote in a post on X:
The Hamas terror organization brutally executed six hostages to instil fear and attempt to fracture Israeli society. Israel will respond with full force to this heinous crime. Hamas is responsible and will pay the full price.
The Hamas terror organization brutally executed six hostages to instill fear and attempt to fracture Israeli society. Israel will respond with full force to this heinous crime. Hamas is responsible and will pay the full price.
— ×שר×× ×â×¥ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) September 2, 2024
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the cause of death had not been officially confirmed, but the Israeli press reported yesterday that the autopsy found all six hostages had been shot in the head.
An unnamed Hamas official was quoted by Agence France-Presse on Sunday as saying the hostages had been âkilled by the [Israeli] occupationâs fire and bombingâ, a claim denied by the IDF.