- TEHRAN (AFP) - Hundreds
of thousands demonstrated Friday in the streets of Tehran, Gaza City,
Damascus, Beirut and Tyre to celebrate "al-Qods (Jerusalem) Day,"
calling for the "demise of Israel" and the "liberation
of the holy Muslim land of Palestine".
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- In the Iranian capital, tens of thousands took to the
streets before gathering at the university to take part in collective
prayer.
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- "We have to do everything we can militarily, economically
and financially to support the Palestinian uprising and free this holy
land", former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said there.
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- "Jerusalem Day" is traditionally commemorated
in Iran on the last Friday of the month-long fast of Ramadan, which ends
next Wednesday.
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- "Israel is the most serious military threat to the
region", said Rafsanjani. He added that economic, military and even
nuclear means had to be considered to contribute to the liberation of
Jerusalem and support the Palestinians' struggle.
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- He then criticised Islamic countries for a lack of "practical
support" to the intifada. Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri, former president
of parliament and current advisor to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, also asked Islamic countries to coordinate their support
for the intifada.
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- On Jerusalem Day, reformist and conservative leaders
of the Iranian regime, displayed unity in their hostility to Israel, which
they called a "cancerous tumour".
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- Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi was quoted Friday
by the official IRNA agency as saying that "the peace negotiations
in the Middle East have no meaning since Palestine's children are still
under Israeli fire".
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- "The talks do not serve the interests of the Palestinian
people", said Kharazi, who took part in the demonstration, also attended
by pro-reformist president Mohammad Khatami.
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- The demonstrators filled the streets of Tehran, shouting
anti-Israeli and anti-US slogans. "We should create a liberation
army to free Palestine ... and a court to prosecute Israeli leaders for
war crimes", some demonstrators said in a statement.
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- Also Friday, five Palestinians injured by Israeli bullets
in the West bank and Gaza Strip, arrived for treatment in Tehran.
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- Jerusalem Day, first conceived after the 1979 Islamic
revolution by the late founder of Islamic Iran, was also marked by anti-Israeli
demonstrations outside Iran.
-
- In Lebanon, more than 100,000 Hezbollah supporters gathered
Friday to watch a parade staged by fighters of the Shiite Muslim militia
in southern Beirut.
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- Hezbollah secretary general Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah
said Friday speech the Jewish state should cease to exist and rejected
any compromise with Israel.
-
- Some 30,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, who had come
from southern Lebanon and refugee camps, also demonstrated in the streets
of the seaside city of Tyre.
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- Scouts led the procession of this two-hour long demonstration,
holding banners calling for the liberation of Palestine and the demise
of Israel, and lashing the US for supporting Zionist terrorism.
-
- Also, about 150 members of the al-Mahdi scouts, a Hezbollah
youth organization, gathered at Fatima Gate at Lebanon's border with Israel.
The youths threw stones onto the Israeli side of the border as groups
of them torched US and Israeli flags.
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- In the Gaza Strip, at least 3,000 Islamic Jihad supporters
cheered: "Death to America! Death to Israel!" at a Jerusalem
day rally there.
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- "The intifada must continue until liberation of
Palestine!" others shouted, including a group of some 30 Islamic
Jihad militants dressed in white funerial robes and strapped with dummy
bombs in a sign of their readiness to carry out suicide attacks against
Israel.
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- In Syria, thousands of people, mainly Palestinians also
demonstrated in a procession which ran through the southern Damascus Palestinian
refugee camp of Yarmuk.
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- Protestors voiced their support to the Palestinian uprising,
chanting "Muslims of the world, unite against the Zionist enemy".
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- The demonstration was led by officials of the radical
Palestinian movements based in Damascus such as the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC).
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- Earlier Friday, the secretary general of the Islamic
Jihad in Palestine, Ramadan Adballah Shalah, said in a speech at the Iranian
embassy in Damascus that "the Palestinian people is determined to
free its land and build an independent state with Jerusalem as its capital".
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- Meanwhile, violence exploded across the West Bank and
Gaza Strip on Friday leaving five people dead, including an Israeli woman
killed in a suicide bomb attack at a restaurant that left seven others
hurt.
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- Four Palestinians, including the suicide attacker, also
died in clashes with Israelis on al-Qods day, declared a "day of
rage" by Palestinian militant groups.
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- Friday's deaths brought the number of people killed
since violence erupted in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Israel on September
28 to 356, the vast majority being Palestinians.
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