Worldwide protests against Israel's Gaza offensive (Roundup)

Jan 3, 2009, 17:12 GMT

Tel Aviv - Protests continued around the world against the ongoing Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip on Saturday, including in Israel where tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs demonstrated in the northern town of Sakhnin.

In what media reports said was the largest demonstration of Arabs in Israel in years, the Sakhnin protest started with a minute of silence for the victims of the attacks which have continued for an eighth day.

Among the demonstrators were numerous Arab members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament).

Jamal Zahalka of the Balad party said that the Israeli leadership should be brought before an international court for 'war crimes in Gaza.'

Other demonstrations against the Gaza operation are planned in Tel Aviv and Haifa.

According to polls, 85 per cent of all Israelis support the military operation, which has as its goal the halting of missile fire from the Gaza Strip.

In Britain, meanwhile, thousands of people took to the streets of London and other cities to protest the Israeli raids.

Estimates of those taking part in the demonstration in London ranged between 6,000 and 10,000. Witnesses said around 1,000 shoes were thrown at the fence protecting the Downing Street entrance to the residence of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The shoe-hurling - an extreme insult in Arab culture - was reminiscent of that by an Iraqi reporter targeting US President George W Bush at a press conference in Baghdad last month.

Protests took place in 17 other cities including Manchester (with 2,000 people demonstrating) as well as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Portsmouth and Hull. More than 30 Muslim, peace and artist groups organized the protests which saw demonstrators wave Palestinian flags and shout anti-Israel slogans.

According to a Downing Street spokesman, the British prime minister telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and called for an immediate ceasefire, saying that missile fire by the Gaza Strip's radical Hamas factor as well as the Israeli military action had to end.

In the Greek capital Athens, around 2,500 protesters, including many Arabs, gathered in front of the Israeli embassy to protest the Israeli attacks. Police responded with teargas after protesters threw stones at them, television reports said.

In France, an estimated 25,000 people took part in a march through central Paris alone, according to organizers, although police spoke of only 6,000 participants.

Protesters carrying Palestinian flags marched along luxury department stores near the Paris Opera and chanted 'Murderer Israel, Accomplice Sarkozy,' while youths from the city's immigrant neighbourhoods burned Israeli flags.

North African immigrants dominated the march but delegations from the country's leftist parties and members of a Jewish-Arab peace group also took part.

In Lyon, up to around 15,000 people took to the streets. A mass rally was also held in the port city of Marseille.