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Across Mideast, Protests Erupt Over ‘Horrific Scenes’ in Gaza [1]
['Vivian Yee', 'More About Vivian Yee']
Date: 2023-10-18
They donned the black-and-white checkered Palestinian scarf known as the kaffiyeh in Tunis, unfurled giant Palestinian flags in downtown Cairo and chanted against Israeli occupation in the normally sleepy Oman capital of Muscat. In Morocco and Bahrain, they demanded a reversal of their government’s normalization with Israel, the country they consider responsible for oppressing their Palestinian brethren.
In Lebanon, they pushed toward the United States Embassy, denouncing the superpower as an enabler of Israel’s brutality toward civilians in the Gaza Strip. In Istanbul, 80,000 people massed outside the Israeli Consulate, including some who attempted to storm the building with stones, sticks, torches and fireworks.
Thousands of protesters marched in grief, fury and solidarity across the Middle East on Tuesday night and Wednesday, after hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in an explosion at a hospital in Gaza. Although Israel and the United States said the evidence pointed to a faulty rocket fired by Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group, there was little doubt for those protesters that Israel was to blame — and not just for the hospital deaths, but for the broader conflict as well.
“What is happening is an extermination,” said Khaled Mhamdi, 27, a content creator who was among the thousands who gathered outside the French Embassy in Tunis on Wednesday. “The whole world should do something to stop it.”
The carnage at Al Ahli Arab Hospital, the site of the blast in Gaza on Tuesday, unified not only Arabs in the street but also the leaders they tend to regard with weary distrust. Some Arabs have berated their governments as failing to stand up to Israel in the past, but now those governments have nearly uniformly condemned Israel for the attack. The leaders of Jordan and Egypt canceled a meeting with President Biden after the hospital explosion, apparently unwilling to stomach being seen with the leader of Israel’s staunchest supporter as images of bloodied children at the hospital were ricocheting around Arab social media.
The widespread criticism made for a striking convergence: For once, many Arab publics long frustrated with their leaders over a wide range of issues appeared to be more or less on the same page as their governments.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/world/middleeast/protests-gaza-hospital-israel-palestine.html
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