Thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators holding banners and chanting anti Israeli slogans walk in Paris on Sunday to protest against the Israeli army’s bombings in the Gaza strip.

PARIS: Clashes erupted in Paris on Sunday as thousands of people protested against Israel and in support of residents in the Gaza Strip, where a six-day conflict has left 166 Palestinians dead.

Several thousand demonstrators walked calmly through the streets of Paris behind a large banner that read “Total Support for the Struggle of the Palestinian People.”

But clashes erupted at the end of the march on Bastille Square, with people throwing projectiles onto a cordon of police who responded with tear gas. The unrest was continuing early Sunday evening.

In the northern city of Lille, between 2,300 and 6,000 people protested peacefully, according to differing figures provided by the police and organizers.

The descent into violence in the Gaza Strip began on June 12 when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and later murdered, triggering a major military crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank and an escalation of rocket fire from Gaza.

The brutal revenge killing of a Palestinian teenager by Jewish extremists on July 2 added further fuel to the fire, turning into an all-out conflict on July 8 when Israel launched an air campaign against Gaza militants.

The Palestinian death toll from Israel’s punishing air campaign has hit 166.

So far, no Israelis have been killed, although militants in Gaza have pounded the country with nearly 700 rockets since the fighting began and a further 150 have been intercepted by the Jewish state’s Iron Dome defense system.

“I came to say no to this massacre,” Amid Hamadouch, 30, told AFP at the Paris protest while it was still peaceful, with a sticker reading “Boycott Israel, Racist State” on his jacket.

“They are bombing innocent people. There are missiles being launched by Hamas, but the Israeli response is disproportionate. They are attacking the civilian population and not Hamas officials.”

The crowd, very young, shouted slogans such as : “We Are All Palestinians!” and “Only One Solution, End the Occupation!.”

Many protesters carried banners on which they had stuck photos taken from the Internet, reportedly showing Palestinian children killed or injured, houses razed to the ground or clouds of smoke emerging from bombed districts in Gaza.

Morrocan rabbi beaten up

In Morocco, a young man beat up a rabbi in the economic capital of Casablanca over Israel’s deadly air war on Gaza, a newspaper reported on Sunday.

Tel Quel said on its website that the attack took place on Friday as Moshe Ohayon was walking toward his synagogue.

The unidentified assailant asked: “Are you Jewish? What’s the Tsahal (Israeli army) doing to our brothers?” the weekly quoted the rabbi as saying.

Ohayan said he was punched to the ground and then pummelled until he lost consciousness.

“I have lodged a complaint and am waiting to see what happens,” he said.

According to friends contacted by AFP, he suffered three broken ribs.

Moroccan authorities had no immediate comment on the incident, which took place hours before a demonstration held in Casablanca in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Rabat has condemned as “unjustified and inadmissible” Israel’s raids on Gaza, whose declared aim is to halt rocket attacks on its territory, that have cost more than 160 Palestinian lives since Tuesday.

Morocco’s Jewish community numbered almost 300,000 in the mid-1900s, or 10 percent of the North African country’s population.

But these numbers dropped dramatically in the decades after the 1948 founding of the Jewish state, and today only around 5,000 Jews remain.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, a majority of those killed in Gaza so far — 70 percent — have been civilians, of whom 30 percent were children.

 
[wpResize]