A Palestinian bus driver was found hanged inside his vehicle on Monday, an incident Israeli police described as a suicide but which the driver’s family said they believed was an attack.
The incident quickly touched off Palestinian stone-throwing protests and a general strike in some large Palestinian suburbs of Jerusalem, pouring more fuel on tensions stoked over the past few weeks by a dispute over Jerusalem’s holiest site. The bus driver, Youssef al-Ramouni, 32, was found dead at the start of the route he was supposed to have driven late on Sunday, in an area of Jerusalem close to Jewish settlements and Palestinian neighborhoods. Israeli police said the evidence suggested Ramouni had committed suicide. But rumors quickly spread in the Palestinian media that he had been killed by Jewish assailants, stirring tension and violence.