Wide sectors of the Israeli economy are expected to shut down or disrupted for the day, including public transportation and Ben-Gurion Airport. However, hospitals, pharmacies and other essential services are expected to remain open.

“A deal must be reached; a deal is more important than anything else,” said Arnon Bar-David, chairman of the Histadrut, the umbrella organization of Israeli labor and trade union. The Histadrut represents around 800,000 workers.

The recovery of the six bodies from a tunnel in Rafah has made the families of Israel’s roughly 100 captives bitterly angry with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Autopsies revealed that Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Alex Labonov, Ori Danino and Carmel Gat had been killed an estimated 48 hours before being found by soldiers.

“A deal for the return of the abductees has been on the table for over two months,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said on Sunday. “If it weren’t for the thwarting [of the deal], the excuses and the spins, the abductees whose deaths we learned of this morning would probably be alive.”

The strike has the support of The Israel Business Forum, which represents private sector employees in 200 of Israel’s largest companies.

Netanyahu said, “While Israel is conducting intensive negotiations with the mediators in a supreme effort to reach a deal, Hamas continues to firmly refuse any offer.”

Support for the strike was not unanimous, however. Firefighters, for example, said they would quit the Histadrut, saying “We do not intend to take part in the political strike.”

At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 97 remaining hostages, more than 30 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.

Image - Yonatan Sindel/Flash90