Thousands of Moroccans again took to the streets of their capital today to call for an end to their country’s ties with Israel, which they denounced for “genocide” in Gaza, AFP reports.
“Normalisation is treason,” and “Stop the mas-sacre,” read banners protesters carried in front of Morocco’s parliament in the centre of Rabat.
AFP journalists estimated more than 10,000 people joined the rally, some of them carrying an immense Palestinian flag.
“We see 24 hours a day bombardments, children killed, nearly 30,000 dead and nothing stops it. The genocide continues,” said Abdelhakim Ziani, 25, a medical student who joined the rally and wants an end to ties between Morocco and Israel.
“We can’t continue selling and buying from these genocidal people,” he said. In refugee camps in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinians relying on the UN agency United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for schooling and healthcare fear key services will stop as donors have paused funding over accusations staff members took part in Hamas’ Oct 7 attack, Reuters reports.
Most of the focus on the fate of the UN aid agency for Palestinians has been on its emergency operations in conflict-hit Gaza where it is critical to an aid effort for the enclave’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
“If they cut off aid from UNRWA, there will be no help of any kind for residents, especially in refugee camps because they rely on UNRWA,” said Mohammad al-Masri, a resident of Dheisheh refugee camp near Bethlehem.
Daoud Faraj was 10 years old when his family became refugees. Now 85, he has lived most of his life in the West Bank’s Aida refugee camp near Jerusalem.
“Cutting off aid will hurt many people. Not only me,” he said, referring to the health services and schools that UNRWA manages in the camp.
A senior Hamas officer survived on Saturday an Israeli assassination attempt in Lebanon, Palestinian and Lebanese security sources said, with officials reporting two killed in the attack south of Beirut.
Israeli forces and the Lebanese movement Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, have traded near-daily fire since Oct 7. But the Israel-Lebanon violence has been largely contained to the border area, and Saturday’s strike was the second-farthest deadly attack from the frontier in four months of hostilities.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said an Israeli drone struck a car in the coastal town of Jadra, about 40 kilometres from the border.
The Palestinian source said the strike “was a failed attempt to assassinate a senior official in the (Hamas) movement”.
A Lebanese security official identified the target as Hamas recruitment officer Bassel Saleh. Shortly after the initial strike on Saleh’s car, a second Israeli drone hit the same location, killing two people, the official said. Hezbollah said one of its members had died.
Saleh “survived but suffered burns on his back and was admitted to hospital”, the Lebanese official said.
The official added Saleh is “in charge of a recruit-ment unit in the West Bank”, occupied by Israel since 1967.
A Hamas official in Lebanon said that no member of the group had been killed in the Jadra attack.
An official with the Lebanese Risala Scout association, which operates rescue teams and is affiliated with the Hezbollah-allied Amal movement, said that two civilians had been killed.
But Hezbollah later announced one of its members had been killed by Israeli fire. A source close to the group said the man, Khalil Fares, was one of the two people killed in his town of Jadra.
There was no immediate comment from Israel. A photographer at the scene saw a damaged car and a charred motorcycle nearby, with bloodstains all over the site of the strike near the beach.—AFP
