CAIRO/AMMAN/TRIPOLI, 24 March 2004 — Thousands of Arabs in several countries protested for the second day yesterday against Israel’s assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, some burning Israeli and US flags and calling for holy war.
Hundreds of Egyptians, sometimes as many as 1,000, gathered in Cairo for each of the protests at two universities, as well as at the lawyers and journalists union offices in Cairo, AFP reporters said.
“Oh leaders, open the door of jihad (holy war),” proclaimed black banners held aloft by hundreds of protestors at the lawyers’ union in Cairo.
The demonstrators brandished portraits of Sheikh Yassin, who was killed by an Israeli missile strike Monday just after leaving dawn prayers at a Gaza City mosque.
Later the protestors here burned American and Israeli flags.
At the journalists union, protestors held aloft posters saying: “No to peace with criminals” and chanted slogans like Prophet “Mohammed’s army has returned.”
Riot police deployed en masse to ensure the protests went off peacefully.
At Ein Shams University, more than 1,000 students attended a rally organized by the Islamist group on campus, chanting, “Negotiations achieve nothing. Only the gun is the solution.”
The students held banners saying: “No to America, the intifada will continue.”
Protestor Mohammed Mahmud, 22, said “we demand the expulsion of Israel’s ambassador and we demand the Arab summit take economic and military measures against Israel and support the intifada with weapons and money.”
Sit-In in Jordan
Some 400 Jordanian trade unionists and opposition supporters held a sit-in in central Amman yesterday to protest the assassination of Yassin.
Protestors held pictures of the Palestinian militant and chanted calls for revenge.
“Yassin rest in peace. We will continue the fight,” they said.
The head of the doctors’ union, Mohammad Oran, told AFP the professional associations would present a memorandum to the prime minister calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and the closure of the embassy.
Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab countries to have signed peace treaties with the Jewish state.
Thousands Demonstrate in Libya
Some 5,000 people rallied in the Libyan capital yesterday to protest Israel’s killing of Yassin, an AFP correspondent said.
The demonstrators burned Israeli flags and portraits of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who Israeli officials said personally supervised Monday’s missile strike in Gaza City. The protestors condemned the “inaction of Arab governments” and called for the breaking off all ties between Arab countries and the Jewish state.
Arab leaders are scheduled to hold a regular summit in Tunis next Monday.
The Egyptian protesters launched a campaign for donations to be sent to the Palestinian territories, while students called on Arabs to revive a boycott of American products.
“By drinking Coca Cola and Pepsi you are drinking from your brothers’ blood,” one banner read.
At the University of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the prestigious 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Muslim learning, hundreds of women covered in headscarves staged their own protest.
