BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan 10, (Agencies): Nearly 20,000 people marched through southern Lebanon on Saturday to protest Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, as thousands also took to the streets in several European cities to show their anger. Similar protests have occurred almost daily in the Middle East and elsewhere since Israel launched its operation more than two weeks ago to stop rocket fire from the militant Palestinian group Hamas. The demonstrations have been fueled by the rising death toll in Gaza, which currently stands at over 800 Palestinians. Thirteen Israelis have also died in the fighting. Saturday’s rally in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiyeh was organized by the militant Hezbollah group, a strong ally of Hamas that fought its own war with Israel in the summer of 2006.

The thousands of demonstrators who marched through the streets waved Lebanese and Palestinian flags and some carried posters of bloody Palestinian children. “Gaza is the nation’s battle,” read a banner carried by several of the protesters.
In London, celebrities and left-wing politicians addressed crowds in central Hyde Park before marching to the Israeli embassy, which has been the scene of rowdy protests since the Jewish state’s offensive against the Islamist Hamas movement which controls Gaza began on Dec 27.
Organisers hoped that 100,000 people would turn out, although an early police estimate said 12,000 attended.

Some carried banners reading “Stop the holocaust in Gaza,” “Freedom for Palestine,” while others waved Palestinian flags.
Similar demonstrations took place on the streets of other European cities including Athens, Berlin, Budapest, Paris and Sarajevo, capital of part Muslim Bosnia-Hercegovina.
Israeli troops battled Hamas fighters in Gaza into a third week on Saturday, as a new round of diplomacy got under way to end a war that has killed more than 800 people in Gaza despite a United Nations truce call.
“This gathering proves that Sarajevo has learned its lesson on what happens when the world remains silent at the time when innocent civilians suffer,” peace activist Svetlana Broz told the crowd in the Bosnian capital, referring to the 1992-95 war in the former Yugoslavia that claimed at least 100,000 lives.
Tens of thousands chanting “We are all Palestinians” joined the mass protest in Paris, including people of Arab origin and left-wing politicians, watched over by some 3,800 police and gendarmes.
Police put the number of participants at 30,000, while the organisers claimed 100,000.
“We want to point to the hypocrisy of an international community which votes for tons of resolutions that it never enforces,” declared Olivier Besancenot, leader of France’s Revolutionary Communist League.

Elsewhere in France, pro-Palestinian rallies were held in Bordeaux, Grenoble Lille, Marseille, Nice and Toulouse.
In London’s Hyde Park, Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of Tony Blair, currently the Middle East Quartet’s envoy, told the crowd that his suggestions for a ceasefire would condemn Palestinians to a “slow, agonising death.”
“Tony Blair’s only comment regarding the ceasefire has been to say that it can only take place after the tunnels in Gaza are destroyed,” she said.
“What he is suggesting means that after the massacre people will have no access to food, kerosene and medicines that came through those tunnels. That is not a ceasefire — that is a slow, agonising death.”
Others on the Hyde Park speakers’ list included musician Brian Eno and campaigner Bianca Jagger.
Lindsey German, convenor of rally organisers Stop the War Coalition, said he wanted the British government to do more to stop the “massacre” in Gaza.
“There would have been outrage from governments around the world if this had happened anywhere else — the condemnation has been at best half-hearted.”

Campaigners also gathered in the Scottish capital Edinburgh, and Newcastle in northeast England.
Meanwhile, a peace rally organised by the Board of Deputies of British Jews is scheduled to take place in London on Sunday.
In western Germany, some 10,000 people according to police, largely from the ethnic Turkish community, protested in Duisburg. Police briefly intervened when some demonstrators threw snowballs at a window bearing two Israeli flags.
Police in Berlin said some 6,600 protesters gathered for a peaceful rally in the German capital, with similar rallies of support for the Palestinians in Munich and Cologne.
In Athens, more than 2,000 people took part in a protest staged by left-wing organisations and Palestinians, shouting “Freedom for Palestine” before marching on to the Israeli embassy.
In Italy thousands demonstrated in Milan and Turin, while several hundred took part in a protest in Venice.

In Utrecht in the Netherlands some 500 people gathered to remember the Palestinian and Israeli civilians killed in the conflict, organisers IKV Pax Christi said.
In the Swiss city of Bern some 7,000 protestors, among them three leftwing parliamentarians, turned out.
Demonstrations took place in Scandinavian capitals, the largest in Stockholm which drew 4,000 to 5,000 people. In Oslo where 2,000 people protested there were clashes with police while in Copenhagen acts of vandalism were reported.
A rally is planned for Madrid on Sunday.
Mauritania’s decision to recall its ambassador to Israel earlier this week marked the “first step” to cutting ties with the Jewish state, an adviser to the northwest African country’s military junta said on Saturday.

“Mauritania’s decision to recall its ambassador in Israel is a first step towards severing ties with this aggressive entity,” said Cheikh Ben Horma Ould Ben Babana, adviser to the president of Mauritania’s ruling High Council of State.
“This relationship between Mauritania and the Israeli entity disturbs and embarrasses Mauritanians,” Ben Babana told reporters in Cairo after talks with Arab League officials.
Mauritania said on Monday it had recalled its ambassador for consultations, days after protesters took to the streets of the capital Nouakchott to demand the Islamic country cut diplomatic ties with Israel over its military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
In Istanbul, Turkey, first ladies from Middle Eastern countries on Saturday added their voices to international demands that Israel halt attacks on Gaza, withdraw troops and end its blockade.
Meeting in Istanbul, the wives of the leaders also made an emotional plea for international aid to help women and children in the stricken region.

“We, in the name of mothers who attach great importance to peace and human life, request that the international community press Israel to stop its attacks,” said the Turkish prime minister’s wife, Emine Erdogan, reading from a joint declaration issued at the end of their meeting.
“Israel must abide by the UN resolution (calling for a ceasefire). It must lift the embargo. Israel must immediately withdraw its forces from Gaza,” she said.
Jordan’s Queen Rania, Syria’s Asma Assad, Sheika Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned of Qatar and Lebanon’s Wafa Suleyman, were joined by Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s daughter, Aisha, and the Pakistani prime minister’s wife, Fauzia Gilani, at the meeting held at a hotel on the shores of the Bosporus.
All wore white shawls — with the word “peace” inscribed in Turkish, Arabic and English — over their shoulders.

A group of 30 pro-Palestinian activists including EU MPs and doctors plan to brave Israeli forces in a bid to deliver desperately-needed medical aid to Gaza by sea from Cyprus on Monday.
The Free Gaza Movement’s last attempt to break the blockade on the embattled territory resulted in its boat colliding with an Israeli navy vessel and being turned back on Dec 30.
The activists insist their boat, which was in danger of sinking, was repeatedly rammed by the Israeli vessel.
“Israel’s war on the people of Gaza is illegal and immoral and it’s created a dire humanitarian crisis on the strip,” Huwaida Arraf, a coordinator for the US-based group, told AFP on Saturday.
“The international community has failed to protect civilians there, so as humanitarian activists it is incumbent on us to do something,” she added.
A Greek-registered 22-metre (70-foot) pleasure craft is expected to sail from the southern port of Larnaca on Monday with four MPs from Greece, Spain and Belgium on board and seven doctors.
Also packed on the “Spirit of humanity” will be tonnes of basic medical supplies such as bandages, IV bags and other medicines for hospitals in Gaza.
The United Nations refugee agency on Saturday slammed an Israeli ambassador’s accusations that its Gaza employees were Hamas loyalists.
“We are getting mixed message from the Israeli authorities,” UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness told AFP.

“Yesterday (they) expressed deep regret about the death of our workers and urged us to resume our humanitarian work as soon as possible.
“And yet today an Israeli ambassador is accusing those very same workers of being terrorists. It seems that the Israeli authorities are tying themselves in knots.”
Israel’s ambassador to Austria, Dan Ashbel, said in an interview with the Austrian weekly “profil” to be published Monday that UNRWA’s workers “are Hamas people who distribute aid to those loyal to Hamas.”
“This aid organisation has been taken over by Hamas and is being used as a weapon against its own people,” he added.
A UN official speaking on condition of anonymity said the agency has run background checks on all its Palestinian staff and handed a list of all their names over to Israeli authorities.
US President George W. Bush agreed Saturday on the need for an immediate ceasefire in Israel’s war with the Palestinian Hamas group in the Gaza Strip, the Czech presidency of the European Union said.

Bush and Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek also said in a telephone conversation there should be delivery of humanitarian aid, as well as an end to the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip, a statement said.
“Topolanek briefly interrupted his Moscow talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and spoke on the phone with US President Bush,” it said.
“The phone call dealt with the situation in the Middle East. Both politicians agreed that it is necessary to establish an immediate ceasefire and begin to deliver humanitarian aid, as well as to stop the smuggling of arms into the Gaza Strip.
“The US President stressed that the Czech Prime Minister may, in his capacity as President of the European Council, endorse the distribution of humanitarian aid through the Palestinian National Authority.”