Protests break out over 'horrible scenes' of Palestinians in Gaza

Not only the Arabs in the streets but, strikingly, also their leaders almost unanimously condemned Israel for the attack on the Gaza hospital and other violence affecting Palestinians.

They donned the black-and-white checkered Palestinian scarf known as keffiyeh in Tunis, unfurled giant Palestinian flags in the central Cairo and chanted against the Israeli occupation in Oman's usually sleepy capital Muscat. In Morocco and Bahrain, they demanded a reversal of their government's normalization with Israel, a country they consider responsible for the oppression of their Palestinian brothers.

In Lebanon, they pushed towards the United States. US Embassy, ​​denouncing the superpower for enabling Israel's brutality towards civilians in the Gaza Strip. In Istanbul, 80,000 people gathered in front of the Israeli consulate, some of whom attempted to storm the building with stones, sticks, torches and fireworks.

Thousands of protesters marched in sadness, fury and solidarity across the Middle East Tuesday evening and Wednesday, after hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed in an explosion at a Gaza hospital. Even though Israel and the United States said the evidence pointed to a faulty rocket fired by Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group, there was no doubt among protesters that Israel was responsible — and not just for attack on the hospital, but for the wider conflict. also.

“What is happening is an extermination,” said Khaled Mhamdi, 27, a content creator who was among thousands of people gathered outside the French embassy in Tunis on Wednesday. "The whole world should do something to stop this."

The carnage at Al Ahli Hospital, the site of the explosion in Gaza on Tuesday, did not only unified Arabs in the world. the street, but also the leaders whom they tend to regard with weary suspicion. Some Arabs have chastised their governments for their failure to stand up to Israel in the past, but today those governments almost unanimously condemn Israel for the attack. Jordanian and Egyptian leaders canceled a meeting with President Biden after the hospital explosion, apparently unwilling to bear being seen with the leader of Israel's most fervent supporter amid images of bloodied children at hospital ricocheted across Arab social media.

< p class="css-at9mc1 evys1bk0">The widespread criticism reported a striking convergence: for once, many Arab audiences long frustrated by their leaders on a wide range of issues appeared to be more or less on the same page as them. ="group">ImageA huge crowd gathered Wednesday near the French embassy in Tunis to protest Israeli actions in Gaza. Credit...Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Whatever final conclusions investigators, by analyzing the evidence, might eventually draw about the origins of the explosion, it did not seem likely that they were possible. This changes, for many Arabs, the harsh truth: It is Israel that is now bombing Gaza, killing far more civilians than Palestinian militants killed in Israel 11 days ago, in a repeat of the lopsided calculations of the previous Israeli retaliatory campaigns.

It was Israel that locked up two million Palestinian civilians in the open-air prison that rights groups say has become Gaza and which has systematically diminished any Palestinian chance of statehood, establishing what experts say are the foundations of the conflict. And it was Israel that, many Arabs said, had a history of covering up its role in past abuses.

In this context, they said, it There was only one side to stand up to. responsible for the horror of Tuesday night.

It was infuriating to discover instead that Israel's main donor, the United States, rejected the blame on the Palestinians, and that...