Thousands take part in pro-Palestinian rally in Turkey, Morocco

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2023-10-16T07:59:18+05:00 AFP

 

Thousands turned out for a pro-Palestinian rally in Istanbul on Sunday, after sustained Israeli bombardment in the Gaza Strip and warnings about a ground attack there.

"They've been chasing people out of their homes for years. Now they're not killing people one by one day by day, they're killing them en masse," one of the marchers, Bayram Atabey, a shopkeeper in his thirties, told AFP.

"This is what Israel is doing and we are protesting against it," he added at the rally organised by a radical Islamist group allied to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamo-conservative AKP party.

Two other large-scale demonstrations took place on Friday and Saturday on Istanbul's historic peninsula to denounce Israel's response to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas's bloody attack on the Jewish state on September 7, the bloodiest ever committed on its territory.

One of Erdogan's sons, and a son-in-law, took part in Saturday's march.

During his two decades in power, Erdogan has repeatedly taken a stand in favour of the Palestinians, notably in a virulent indictment of former Israeli president Shimon Peres at the Davos forum in 2009.

Last year, however, he ended more than a decade of diplomatic rift with Israel.

In September he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the first time, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

This week the Turkish president nevertheless forcefully denounced "the indiscriminate massacre of innocent people in Gaza", asserting that Israel "does not behave like a state".

Tens of thousands march in Morocco for Palestinians

Tens of thousands protested in Morocco Sunday in support of Palestinians amid the Gaza war, the biggest demonstration in the North African kingdom since it normalised ties with Israel in 2020.

Crowds stretching for two kilometres (more than a mile) marched through the capital Rabat in the mass rally called by an alliance of Islamist parties and a left-wing coalition.

"The people will liberate Palestine," demonstrators chanted while others waved huge Palestinian flags, donned keffiyehs and voiced "unconditional support for resistance to the occupation".

"We apologise to the people of Gaza because we can't do more than protest," said university professor Sheherazade Bekkari, 50, who had travelled more than 200 kilometres from Fez with her children to join the protest.

"Down with Zionism", read some placards, while others declared that "Hamas is Palestine".

Israel's new war was sparked when the Islamist group Hamas, which rules Gaza, attacked southern Israel on October 7 and killed at least 1,400 people.

Israel has launched an intense reprisal, pounding the Gaza Strip with air strikes and killing more than 2,450 people.

Some protesters in Morocco stamped on Israeli and American flags, denouncing Washington's support for Israel.

Other placards denounced "terrorism regardless of its perpetrators".

The protest, which was punctuated by prayers against "tyranny and oppression", was the largest in Morocco since it normalised relations with Israel in December 2020 in a US-sponsored deal.

"The people want to abolish normalisation" some protesters chanted, as well as the slogan "against occupation, against normalisation".

Until now, Morocco's anti-normalisation movement had been able only to mobilise, at most, a few hundred people.

The treaty with Israel has been of great importance to Rabat because it came in exchange for Washington recognising Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara.

Morocco maintains that the territory, a former Spanish colony under its control, is an integral part of the kingdom.

The Polisario Front, which campaigns for Western Sahara’s independence with the support of Algeria, demands a referendum on self-determination.

Israel and Morocco have strengthened their economic and security cooperation following the deal.

However, Moroccan supporters of normalisation have been embarrassed by extreme right-wing parties entering Israel's government and surging violence in the occupied West Bank over recent months.

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