Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Bahrain: thousands of people demonstrate Friday in the Middle East in support of the Palestinians, on the seventh day of a bloody war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, supported by Iran.
“No to the occupation! No to America! “, chanted the demonstrators in Tahrir Square, the heart of the Iraqi capital.
Gathered at the call of Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr “in support of Gaza” and against Israel, they brandished Palestinian and Iraqi flags. A huge Israeli flag was placed on the ground so that protesters could trample it, according to an AFP photographer.
After the bloody Hamas attack on October 7, Israel decreed a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, already under land, air and sea blockade for more than 15 years.
Around 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attack and more than 1,500 Palestinians in the Israeli response, according to local authorities.
The Baghdad demonstration “aims to denounce what is happening in occupied Palestine, the bloodshed and the violation of rights,” Abou Kayan, organizer and member of the Sadrist movement, told AFP.
Moqtada Sadr is in the political opposition, but the movement in support of Gaza benefits from the explicit support of the Iraqi government.
The latter, supported by a parliamentary majority of parties close to Iran, an ally of Hamas, estimated that the attack launched Saturday against Israel by the Palestinian Islamist movement was the “natural result of the systematic oppression” to which are subjected the Palestinians “on the part of the Zionist occupation authority”.
“Down with America”
In Tehran, demonstrators brandished Iranian, Palestinian and Lebanese Hezbollah flags. They held banners reading: “Down with America” and “Down with Israel,” noted an AFP journalist. Similar rallies took place in other cities in Iran, where American and Israeli flags were burned.
Iran, a country whose population is predominantly Shiite Muslim but not Arab, supports Palestinian Hamas financially and militarily. The Israeli state is their common sworn enemy, and the Palestinian movement seeks its destruction.
In Jordan, a neighboring country of Israel to which it is linked by a peace treaty, more than 10,000 people gathered in the center of Amman, near the Hussein Grand Mosque, at the call of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood and several left-wing and youth groups.
More remarkable: in a mosque in Riyadh, the Saudi capital where demonstrations are banned, an AFP journalist saw a police officer handcuffing a worshiper who interrupted Friday prayers by calling out to the imam: “Speak about Palestine ! Gaza is under bombs! “.
The imam replied that the sacred place “was not made for politics”, before the man was arrested.
In Bahrain, a small Gulf kingdom, hundreds of faithful chanted “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!” » before Friday prayers in the Diraz mosque. A demonstration then brought together several hundred people.
In France, where President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday called on Israel for a “strong” but “fair” response to the Hamas attack, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin ordered a ban on “pro-Palestinian demonstrations because they are likely to generate disturbances to public order.”
On October 7, hundreds of Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel in vehicles, by air and sea, killing civilians in the streets, in their homes or at rave parties, spreading terror under a barrage of rockets.
During this offensive, they kidnapped several dozen Israeli hostages, foreign and binational, whom Hamas threatened to execute. Israeli authorities have identified around 150 hostages.
Israel responded by announcing a war to destroy the capacity for action of Hamas, a movement described as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, shelling the Gaza Strip and deploying tens of thousands of soldiers around the Palestinian enclave and on its northern border with Lebanon.
Since the start of hostilities, at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Israel. On the Palestinian side, more than 1,500 people were killed, including many civilians, according to local authorities.