Earlier in the day, media reported that the president of the Palestinian Fatah movement, Mahmoud Abbas, made the call and was joined by other factions, urging Palestinians to join the "Day of Rage" protest against the US position on settlements.
According to the Palestinian WAFA news outlet, dozens of Palestinians suffered from tear gas and rubber bullets used by the Israeli military during the protests in some cities of the West Bank.
On 18 November, US State Secretary Mike Pompeo said that the US did not consider Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land to be illegal, a statement which went against decades of international law and US policy in relation to the settlements. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the US statements on Israeli settlements brought the situation to a deadlock.
Following the statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed on 19 November the bill that extends the Israeli law over strategic settlements in the southern West Bank.
Israel has been in control of the Palestinian-majority West Bank since the Six-Day War in 1967. More than 120 Israeli civilian settlements have since been built in the disputed area. According to international law, these settlements are illegal. Among the international documents that codify the unacceptability of such practice is Article 49 of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilian persons during times of war, which reads that "the Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
