Flames of fury: ‘Day of jihad’ sparks fears of wider regional conflict after huge numbers of Muslims protest against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza across the Middle East

Anti-Israel protests have been held in a ‘day of jihad’ across the world today after former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal demanded thousands of Muslims take to the streets to demonstrate amid the ongoing conflict. 

Tens of thousands of Muslims demonstrated Friday across the Middle East in support of the Palestinians and against the intensifying Israeli bombardment of Gaza, underscoring the risk of a wider regional conflict as Israel prepares for a possible ground invasion.

From the typically sedate streets of downtown Amman in Jordan, to Yemen’s war-scarred capital of Sanaa, crowds of Muslim worshippers poured into the streets after weekly Friday prayers, angered by devastating Israeli airstrikes on Gaza that began after the militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented surprise attack on Israel last Saturday.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered Friday in Tahrir Square in the centre of Baghdad, and similar protests have been held in Lebanon and other Arab countries following afternoon prayers.

During some of the protests – like in Iran, Bangladesh and Malaysia – angry demonstrators burned Israeli and American flags. In Beirut, thousands of Hezbollah supporters waved Hezbollah and Palestinian flags while holding pictures of burning Israeli ones.

And in Berlin, home to one of the largest Palestinian diasporas outside the Middle East, pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with riot police, with one bloodied demonstrator being led away from a square in the German capital. 

Thousands more gathered in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Friday for a demonstration in support of Palestinians, with many holding banners reading: ‘The victory march will continue, solidarity with Palestine‘ and ‘Stand with Palestine, Liberated Palestine’.

The widespread protests come after former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal demanded thousands take to the streets today.

‘[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday,’ Meshaal, who currently heads Hamas’s diaspora office, said yesterday. 

The former terror leader, who is based in Qatar, said the governments and peoples of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have a bigger duty to support the Palestinians in comments recorded earlier this week. Jordan and Lebanon are home to the largest number of Palestinian refugees.

In Baghdad, tens of thousands gathered in Tahrir Square in the centre of Iraq’s capital today for protests called by the influential Shiite cleric and political leader Muqtada al-Sadr. 

Giant Palestinian flags were seen laid on the ground alongside the flag of Iraq in a sign of solidarity as the Israeli flag was set alight. Demonstrators at the rally chanted: ‘No to the occupation! No to America!’

‘May this demonstration… terrify the great evil, America, which supports Zionist terrorism against our loved ones in Palestine,’ al-Sadr said in an online statement. 

‘This rally is aimed at condemning what is happening in occupied Palestine, the bloodletting and the violation of rights,’ said Abu Kayan, an organiser of the protest.

In Tokyo, Muslims were embroiled in a standoff with police as they protested on the streets outside of the Israeli embassy in the city. Less than 24 hours earlier, pro-Israel supporters were peacefully singing in Hebrew outside of the same building.

Across Iran, a supporter of Hamas and Israel’s regional archenemy, demonstrators protested. In Tehran, the country’s capital, they burned Israeli and Ameircan flags, chanting: ‘Death to Israel,’ ‘Death to America,’ ‘Israel will be doomed,’ and ‘Palestine will be the conqueror.’ 

‘The Palestinian people are fed up, now your idea is to destroy Gaza, the houses of the people,’ Iran’s hard-line President Ebrahim Raisi said in a speech in the country’s southern Fars province. ‘The people of the world and Palestine will cause trouble for you.’ 

Tehran’s state television described the Iranian rallies as ‘screams of a common pain… The pain of the Zionist regime’s (Israel) trampling on humanity’. 

Meanwhile, Jordanian riot police on Friday forcibly dispersed hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters trying to reach a border zone with the Israeli-occupied West Bank as thousands held anti-Israel demonstrations across the country, witnesses said.

More than 10,000 people gathered in central Amman, near the Grand Husseini Mosque, after a call for protests from the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, and several leftist and youth groups.

Jordan is worried that a regional widening of violence arising from the war between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas in Gaza could have repercussions for itself given that a large percentage of its population are Palestinians.

The nation lost the West Bank including East Jerusalem to Israel in the 1967 Middle East war and the Palestinian territory was seeing a rise in violence between Palestinians and the Israeli military and settlers even before the Gaza conflict erupted.

Witnesses said police fired tear gas to halt about 500 demonstrators who had reached a security checkpoint outside the capital Amman on a highway leading to a main border crossing.

The interior ministry had issued a ban against holding anti-Israel marches in the sensitive border area, where it said the Jordan river valley was closed to protesters but that licensed protests elsewhere would be allowed.

The outpouring of Arab anger against Israel over its siege and bombardment of Gaza retaliating for a devastating cross-border Hamas attack also fuelled a large rally on Friday in downtown Amman and in many of the kingdom’s main cities.

It comes after Meshaal said yesterday: ‘Tribes of Jordan, sons of Jordan, brothers and sisters of Jordan… This is a moment of truth and the borders are close to you, you all know your responsibility.

‘To all scholars who teach jihad… to all who teach and learn, this is a moment for the application (of theories).’

Today, several thousand protesters near downtown Amman chanted slogans in support of Hamas and demanded the government close the Israeli embassy and scrap the 1994 peace treaty with Israel.

In the cities of Irbid and Zarqa, thousands took to the streets carrying Hamas flags, vowing revenge against Israel and calling on the terrorists to escalate strikes.

The peace treaty remains widely unpopular among Jordanians who see normalisation with Israel as a sellout of the rights of their Palestinian brethren seeking to establish a state in Israeli-occupied territories.

The Israeli embassy, where protesters gather daily, has long been a flashpoint of anti-Israel protests at times of turmoil in the Palestinian territories.

In the Gulf state of Bahrain, hundreds of worshippers chanted ‘Death to Israel!’ and ‘Death to America!’ ahead of Friday prayers at Diraz mosque.

Hundreds of people then joined a protest march, some of them waving Palestinian flags and others stamping on Israeli and US emblems that were laid on the ground.

And in the Saudi capital Riyadh, where protests are prohibited, an AFP journalist witnessed police cuffing a worshipper who interrupted Friday prayers by shouting at the imam: ‘Speak about Palestine! Gaza is under bombs!’

Meanwhile in Lebanon, thousands of supporters of Iran-backed Hezbollah rallied in the southern suburbs of Beirut in support of the Palestinians.

The protesters waved Lebanese, Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, chanting slogans in support of Gaza and calling for ‘death to Israel.’ 

At the event, Hezbollah deputy chief Naim Qassem said Hezbollah would be ‘fully prepared’ to join its ally Hamas in the war against Israel when the time is right.

The Iranian-backed terrorist group in neighbouring Lebanon has launched sporadic attacks since the Hamas assault, but largely stayed on the sidelines of the war. 

Qassem said major powers, Arab countries and the UN had ‘directly and indirectly’ told Hezbollah ‘not to interfere’ in ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Despite the warnings, the leader of the powerful Iran-backed Lebanese group – which has already clashed with Israeli forces in recent days – said it was ‘ready’ and would ‘contribute’ to confrontations against its southern neighbour. 

Qassem’s comments came as Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant this afternoon called Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran an ‘axis of evil’. ‘Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas is one axis, an axis of evil. Everything is decided generally from Iran,’ he said.

‘Your battleships do not interest us, nor do your statements frighten us,’ Naim Kassim said at a rally in a southern suburb of Beirut. ‘When the time is right to take action, we will do so.’ 

In Yemen’s Sanaa, held by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels still at war with a Saudi-led coalition, live television footage showed demonstrators crowding streets and waving Yemeni and Palestinian flags. The rebels’ slogan long has been: ‘God is the greatest; death to America; death to Israel; curse of the Jews; victory to Islam.’

After prayers in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital, some worshippers stepped on American and Israeli flags, in a sign of disrespect. Protests there broke up peacefully, though other larger ones were expected later in the day.

‘Stop bombing Palestine!’ shouted one of the demonstrators, Ahmed Raza. ‘Stop killing innocent Palestinians!’

Political and religious parties staged dozens of small demonstrations across the cities of Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, and the capital Islamabad, where US and Israeli flags were burned. 

‘There is so much tyranny meted out to Palestinians, nobody can tolerate it. It is a waste of life if we don’t stand by the righteous,’ said Tahira Khan, a 50-year-old designer who joined one of several protests in Karachi attended by around 2,000 people.

Protester Shahid Husain, 47, said the leaders of Muslim nations were failing to stand up for Palestinians. 

‘We came to the streets to make our rulers realise that they don’t need to be scared of the US and that the public wants them to be on the side of Palestine – not Israel and America,’ he said from Peshawar, where police said around 20 protests were held attended by more than 5,000 people.

A few hundred people also gathered in the Afghan cities of Kabul and Jalalabad for pro-Palestinian rallies organised by Taliban authorities.

‘Palestine you are not alone, we are with you,’ one speaker told the crowd. ‘We are poor, but we will do whatever we can. We can’t do much today but use our feet and stand in your support.’

At the weekend, Hamas gunmen killed more than 1,300 people in Israel in the deadliest attack since the country’s creation in 1948.

They seized around 150 hostages – including dozens of Israelis, dual and foreign nationals – whom Hamas is threatening to kill.

Israel has retaliated by raining air and artillery strikes in Gaza for six days, claiming more than 1,500 lives and displacing over 400,000 people in the crowded enclave.

Meanwhile at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, Israeli police had been permitting only older men, women and children to the sprawling hilltop compound for prayers, trying to prevent the potential for violence as tens of thousands attend on a typical Friday. 

Police allowed just a Palestinian teenage girl and her mother into the compound out of 20 worshippers who tried to get in, some of them even over the age of 50. 

Young Palestinian men who were refused entry gathered at the steps near Lion’s Gate, their eyes downcast, until police shouted at them and shepherded them out of the Old City altogether. 

‘We can’t live, we can’t breathe, they are killing everything that is good within us,’ said Ahmad Barbour, a 57-year-old cleaner in a clean white thobe, seething after police blocked him from entering for prayers.  

‘Everything that is forbidden to us is allowed to them,’ he added, referring to Israelis.

The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence before. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

Police later fired tear gas in the Old City and east Jerusalem. The Palestinian Red Crescent said its medics treated six wounded people, with at least one beaten up by officers, the organization said. 

Meshaal’s call for a Friday 13th uprising was reiterated by Hamas itself, according to the Israeli-run, Washington DC-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

MEMRI said that Hamas urged its supporters in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel to rise up in what he called ‘the Al-Aqsa Flood’ – echoing what the the secretive Palestinian mastermind Mohammed Deif calls the attack he launched on Saturday against Israel.

The phrase Israel’s most wanted man used in an audio tape broadcast as Hamas fired thousands of rockets out of the Gaza Strip over the weekend signalled the attack was their payback for Israeli raids at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque.

‘We declare next Friday, ”The Friday of the Al-Aqsa Flood,” as a day of general mobilization in our Arab and Islamic world and among the free people of the world,’ Meshaal’s statement said.

‘It is a day to rally support, offer aid, and participate actively. It is a day to expose the crimes of the occupation, isolate it, and foil all its aggressive schemes. It is a day to demonstrate our love for Palestine, Jerusalem, and Al-Aqsa.

‘It is a day for sacrifice, heroism, and dedication, and to earn the honour of defending the first Qibla of Muslims, the third holiest mosque, and the ascension of the trusted Messenger.’

Israel’s Defence Forces have said they want to completely strip Hamas of its power to govern in Palestine after what has been described as the country’s ‘worst day in history’ with the number of Israeli’s killed in the conflict set to rise further. 

In response to the barbaric attacks, which has seen 1,300 Israelis massacred including pregnant women and children, Israel has launched a relentless barrage of airstrikes that have obliterated entire neighbourhoods in Gaza and killed 1,530 Palestinians. 

The Israeli airstrikes have so far flattened much of the town of Beit Hanoun in the Palestinian enclave’s north-east corner, which Hamas terrorists had been using as a staging ground for their attacks. 

And in a sign that Israel has no notion of stopping its airstrikes, the IDF today issued an evacuation order directly on Friday morning, telling the 1.1 million people living north of an area called Wadi Gaza to move south. This would mean the entire population of Gaza City and its surroundings fleeing their homes.

The UN says it is impossible to move that many people without devastating humanitarian consequences, and has urged Israel to rescind the order.

The Gaza Strip, home to 2.3million civilians, has so far been bombarded by approximately 6,000 bombs containing a total of 4,000 tonnes of explosives since Saturday when it began striking Hamas targets, the Israeli army said yesterday. 

But Palestinians are preparing for a ground offensive of unprecedented scale on the tiny, crowded enclave, exceeding previous bouts of destructive warfare. 

Palestine‘s health minister also warned that Gaza is facing a humanitarian and health catastrophe and urged all countries and human rights groups to help with the immediate entry of medical and emergency aid to the enclave.

Meanwhile, Arab League chief Ahmed Abul Gheit branded the Israeli order a ‘forced transfer’ that he said constitutes a ‘crime‘, while the secretary general of the pan-Arab body, in a letter sent to UN chief Antonio Guterres, accused Israel of carrying out ‘an atrocious act of revenge… punishing helpless civilians in Gaza’.

It comes as Hamas claimed at least 13 Israeli and foreign hostages held in northern Gaza have been killed in Israeli air strikes in the past 24 hours, and before Hamas operatives fired hundreds of rockets towards Israel around midday on Friday.

‘Thirteen prisoners… including foreigners’ were killed in five locations targeted by Israeli fighter jets, Hamas’s armed wing said Friday.

Israel’s military sent one evacuation order directly on Friday morning, telling the 1.1 million people living north of an area called Wadi Gaza to move south. This would mean the entire population of Gaza City and its surroundings fleeing their homes.

According to translations of the IDF flyers online, the army told residents that ‘terrorist organisations have started the war against the State of Israel.’

As a result, it said ‘Gaza City has become a battlefield’ and told residents they had to evacuate ‘Punik immediately and go to the south of the Gaza Valley.’

It also issued a stark warning to Palestinians not to try and cross into Israel.

‘For your security and safety: You should not return to Piona until further notice by the Israel Defense Army,’ the flyers said. ‘Generally and well-known shelters in Gaza City must be evacuated. It is forbidden to approach the security wall, and everyone who is approaching exposes himself to death.’

A small map was also printed on the bottom of the flyer, with arrows pointing from the north of Gaza to the south, showing the 1.1 million Palestinians which way to flee.

The Israeli military had said it would operate with ‘significant force’ in Gaza in the coming days amid fears of a huge ground offensive. Spokesman Jonathan Conricus said Israeli forces ‘will make extensive efforts to avoid harming civilians’.

He added: ‘Out of an understanding that there are civilians here who are not our enemy and we do not want to target them, we are asking them to evacuate.’

But the UN has said it is impossible to move that many people without devastating humanitarian consequences, and has urged Israel to rescind the order.

Suffering in Gaza has been rising dramatically with Palestinians desperate for food, fuel and medicine and the territory’s only power plant shut down for lack of fuel. The morgue at Gaza’s biggest hospital overflowed as bodies came in faster than relatives could claim them.

Meanwhile, a Hamas official called the evacuation order ‘fake propaganda’, urged Palestinians to stay in their homes and not to ‘fall for it’. 

The Hamas Authority for Refugee Affairs called on residents of the north of the territory to ‘remain steadfast in your homes and to stand firm in the face of this disgusting psychological war waged by the occupation’.

The flurry of directives was taken as signalling an already expected Israeli ground offensive, though the Israeli military has not yet confirmed such a decision.

On Thursday it said that while it was preparing, no official decision has been made.

Any ground offensive would be the strongest response yet to Hamas’ shock assault, and would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal guerrilla warfare as Israeli soldiers go house-to-house and hunt down Hamas terrorists.

‘This evacuation is for your own safety,’ the Israeli military said, in a warning it said was sent to all Gaza City civilians.’

Suffering in Gaza has risen dramatically with Palestinians desperate for food, fuel and medicine, while the territory’s only power plant shut down for lack of fuel.

The mortuary at Gaza’s biggest hospital Al Shifa overflowed as bodies came in faster than relatives could claim them.

US defence secretary Lloyd Austin is set to visit on Friday, a day after American secretary of state Antony Blinken was in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The war has claimed at least 2,800 lives on both sides since Hamas launched an incursion on October 7.

Inas Hamdan, an officer at the UN Palestinian refugee agency in Gaza City, said: ‘This is chaos, no-one understands what to do.’

She said all the UN staff in Gaza City and northern Gaza had been told to evacuate south to Rafah.

Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza City, claimed there was no way more than one million people could be safely moved within the timeframe specified, saying: ‘Forget about food, forget about electricity, forget about fuel. The only concern now is just if … you’re going to live.’

She added: ‘What will happen to our patients? We have wounded, we have elderly, we have children who are in hospitals.’

The flurry of directives was taken as signalling an expected Israeli ground offensive, though the Israeli military has not yet confirmed such a decision. On Thursday it said that while it was preparing, no decision has been made.

It comes as Human Rights Watch accused Israel of using white phosphorus munitions in its military operations in Gaza and Lebanon, saying the use of such weapons puts civilians at risk of serious and long-term injury.

At least 1,500 Palestinians have been killed in the indiscriminate bombing campaigns, and Israel has also traded barbs with Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

Human Rights Watch said it verified videos taken in Lebanon on Oct. 10 and Gaza on Oct. 11 showing ‘multiple airbursts of artillery-fired white phosphorus over the Gaza City port and two rural locations along the Israel-Lebanon border’. 

White phosphorus munitions can legally be used on battlefields to make smoke screens, generate illumination, mark targets or burn bunkers and buildings.

Because it has legal uses, white phosphorus is not banned as a chemical weapon under international conventions – but it can cause serious burns and start fires.

White phosphorous is considered an incendiary weapon under Protocol III of the Convention on the Prohibition of Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, which prohibits using incendiary weapons against military targets located among civilians, although Israel has not signed it and is not bound by it.

‘White phosphorous is unlawfully indiscriminate when airburst in populated urban areas, where it can burn down houses and cause egregious harm to civilians,’ Human Rights Watch said on Thursday.

Asked for comment on the allegations, Israel’s military said it was ‘currently not aware of the use of weapons containing white phosphorous in Gaza.’ 

It did not provide comment on the rights watchdog’s allegations of their use in Lebanon.

Palestinian TV channels have broadcast video in recent days showing thin plumes of white smoke lining the sky over Gaza that they say was caused by such munitions.

Israel’s military in 2013 said it was phasing out white phosphorus smokescreen munitions used during its 2008-2009 offensive in Gaza, which drew war crimes allegations from various rights groups.

The military at the time did not say whether it would also review use of weaponised white phosphorus, which is designed to incinerate enemy positions.