RABAT, April 7 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Around three million people flooded the streets of the Moroccan capital Sunday in support of Palestinians as protest escalated worldwide against the Israeli military offensive in the West Bank.
Tens of thousands marched through Damascus. Thousands took to the streets of Barcelona and 5,000 marched peacefully through Sweden's second city Gothenburg, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Thousands of Turks also demonstrated against Israel for the third day running.
Around three million people filled the streets of Rabat, authorities said, in support of the Palestinians.
"Our last estimate is more than three million people who demonstrated on this day," Khalid Soufiani, head of the organization behind the march, the Association in Support of the Struggle of the Palestinian People (AMSLP), told AFP.
Main thoroughfares were thronged with demonstrators protesting against Israeli aggressive operations and shouting slogans denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush.
Moroccan Prime Minister Abderrahmane Youssoufi told the crowd: "The presence of members of my government shows our solidarity of all the Moroccan political forces and institutions with the brotherly Palestinian people and president Yasser Arafat."
In Damascus, Syria's Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, Parliament Speaker Abdel Kader Kaddura and Prime Minister Muhammad Mustafa Miro attended a rally with members of Palestinian resistance factions.
These included Khaled Meshaal, head of the Palestinian Islamic Hamas movement's political wing, and Ahmed Jibril, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC).
Demonstrators called on their leader President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud to "open the borders" with Israel to allow fighters to join the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel.
Nearly 400 Egyptians, most of them lawyers, staged a pro-Palestinian demonstration with posters reading: "Tomorrow, the revolution will take place," and "Jerusalem Will Remain Arab."
Meanwhile, thousands of Turks demonstrated against Israel on Sunday for the third day running, as rallies outside the Arab world have continued to grow with thousands protesting in the U.S, Europe and Latin America.
The largest Turkish rally was held in Istanbul where more than 2,000 people heeded a call by a minor left-wing party and gathered under the slogan "Freedom for Palestine".
"No to war, Fascist Sharon, get out of Palestine" read the banners carried by the demonstrators, referring to the Israeli Prime Minister.
In an unconventional protest, members of a small political party sent three packets of soap to Sharon by post to remind him of the Jewish Holocaust and persuade him to end the operation against the Palestinians, Anatolia reported.
"Nazi leader Adolf Hitler massacred Jews in gas chambers and then turned them into soap in ovens. It is interesting that Sharon, a Jew himself, is behaving like Hitler against the Palestinians," a spokesman for the group said.
Some 150 members of a right-wing youth association laid a black wreath in front of the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, while around 400 members of the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HADEP) staged a sit-in protest at a park on the European side of the city, Anatolia said.
Turkey, a non-Arab Muslim nation, has close ties with Israel since the two sides signed a military cooperation deal in 1996, but it also maintains full-fledged diplomatic relations with the Palestinians and supports their demands for statehood.
Ankara has grown increasingly critical of Sharon's policies against the Palestinians, with Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit recently branding the Israeli operations as "genocide".
Rallies have been staged worldwide since Israel’s recent and thus far most brutal aggressions against the Palestinians started on March 29 when Israeli tanks invaded West Bank cities and attacked the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
The largest turnout was in Paris on Saturday, where nearly 20,000 people heeded a call by labor unions and human rights groups, with other rallies around France, as well as in Bahrain, Chile, Jordan, Turkey and the United States.
A large group of women in traditional black Arab headscarves marched to the central Bastille Square along with leading French union and pacifist figures, some of whom had until recently been holed up in Yasser Arafat's besieged headquarters in Ramallah.
To the cries of "Sharon and Bush - murderers", referring to the Israeli and U.S. leaders, protesters at the head of the march carried a banner reading "Support the Palestinian resistance against the occupation."
Rallies elsewhere in France mobilized thousands in Nantes, Rennes and Rouen in the west, Lille in the north, Strasbourg and Metz in the east, Grenoble in the southeast and Marseille in the south.
"We can't keep quiet much longer," a statement from organizers of a pro-Palestinian rally in Switzerland said, all the while denouncing suicide attacks on Israeli people. Around 9,000 people were at the gathering, called by the Swiss Socialist and Green parties.
In Germany, 5,000 people rallied across the country against the Israeli invasion of the Palestinian territories, in which only two major towns, Jericho and divided Hebron, have not been seized by Israel.
Rallies also occurred in Sweden, Spain, and Italy, where a last minute decision by unions and leftist parties not to take part poured cold water on organizers' hopes tens of thousands would come out.
Five thousand people still showed up to the Italian rally. Last week over 100,000 people showed up for another pro-Palestinian rally.
In the Spanish enclave of Melilla in northern Morocco, some 8,000 mostly Muslim people rallied in support of Palestinians, and additional protests in Bilbao in the north and Granada and Almeria in the south.
And in Chile, 2,000 people gathered to demand Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territories, as Latin American governments expressed concern over their citizens living in the Middle East.
