CAIRO: Thousands of people from across the political spectrum in Nazareth, Turkey, Beirut and Jordan flooded onto the streets to protest against the bloody Israeli naval operation which claimed the lives of up to 19 activists bringing aid supplies to Gaza by boat.
Protesters in Beirut, including school children from the Shatila refugee camp, burned Israeli flags and chanted "Gaza will not surrender," "Where is the United Nations?" and "Death to Israel."
Demonstrations were also held inside the refugee camps, home to between 260,000 and 400,000 Palestinians.
Men, women and children waved Palestinian and Turkish flags as well as those of Palestinian factions and the militant group Hezbollah, which fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006.
They called for a halt to the Middle East peace process and the closure of Israeli embassies and trade offices in the Arab world.
Turkish police were put on high alert as some 10,000 people marched on Istanbul’s central Taksim square from the Israeli consulate where they had converged after news of the raid broke.
"Damn Israel!", "A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye, revenge, revenge!" chanted the protestors, carrying Turkish and Palestinian flags, as they marched towards the square, an AFP photographer reported.
"Close down the Zionist embassy," read a banner carried by the crowd.
More than 2,000 people took to the streets of the Jordanian capital on Monday to protest Israel’s deadly raid on a group of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip.
Waving Jordanian and Palestinian flags, the demonstrators, including Islamist opposition leaders, marched peacefully from the headquarters of the Islamist-dominated trade unions to the prime ministry building near the city centre.
The protesters chanted "Down with Israel," and carried banners that read "We Will not Surrender" and "Break Gaza Blockade."
They demanded that Jordan shut down the Jewish state’s embassy in Amman and expel the Israeli ambassador.
Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994.
"We call on the government to sever ties with the Zionist entity, which has proved its barbarism today," secretary general of the opposition Islamic Action Front (IAF) party said in a statement.
"We demand the United Nations, European Union and the Arab League take immediate action and break the unjust blockade on Gaza."
There was no immediate reaction from the Jordanian government to the raid.
Israel’s Arab community called for a general strike in response to an Israeli naval operation which claimed the lives of at least 10 activists bringing aid supplies to Gaza by boat.
The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, which represents Israel’s 1.3 million-strong Arab community, declared a one-day strike would take place on Tuesday, and called for protests across the country.
