More than 16,000 Lebanese and Palestinians demonstrated Saturday calling on Arab leaders meeting in Cairo to back the Palestinian uprising and sever ties with Israel.
Some 3,000 protestors, led by representatives of various Lebanese and Palestinian parties, marched from the Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut to the Arab League office, carrying Palestinian and Lebanese flags.
Many protestors, wearing the Palestinians' traditional checkered headscarves, held up their hands in the victory sign and carried stones, representing the stone-throwing Palestinian youths in their street fights with the Israeli army.
A group of youth led a donkey with a placard reading: "I believe in peace with Israel" and a dog covered with an Israeli flag.
"Death to Israel!" a group of men shouted, stomping their feet angrily on an Israeli flag burning on the ground.
In the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Helweh, the largest in Lebanon, more than 7,000 people roamed the streets, carrying banners reading: "The summit should halt normalization."
"Mubarak, where are you? They burned the al-Aqsa mosque before your eyes," they shouted, addressing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
The demonstration was called by all Palestinian factions including the mainstream Fateh movement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Groups of guerrillas in military fatigues and armed with assault-rifles carried portraits of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of the Lebanese Shiite fundamentalist movement Hezbollah.
"Palestine is calling for Katyushas," they shouted, in reference to the Katyusha rockets Hezbollah would launch against northern Israel to avenge Israel's killing of civilians in southern Lebanon during its 22-year occupation.
In the Burj Barajneh camp farther south, some 6,000 people demonstrated, including many men armed with assault rifles and headbands reading: "We will not forget you, Jerusalem."
Abu Bashar, an official of the hardline Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, read a memorandum asking Arab leaders to "sever all diplomatic ties and any kind of normalization with the Zionist entity, close the (Israeli) embassies in Arab countries and expel all (Israeli) ambassadors to back the Intifada."
The memorandum also called for "using Arab oil as a weapon to threaten the United States to teach them how to play an unbiased role in the Arab-Israeli conflict" -- BEIRUT (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
