Arabs protest across Mideast

Arabs demonstrated in their thousands across the Mideast today, sometimes clashing with police, against Israel’s offensive in the Palestinian territories.

The most violent protest occurred in Bahrain, a key American ally in the Gulf and home of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, where about 10,000 demonstrators called on the US troops to leave.

Petrol bombs were thrown inside the US embassy compound, setting alight a satellite dish and a sentry box.

In Amman, Jordan, riot police baton-charged about 4,000 demonstrators who converged on the Israeli Embassy. While a police cordon managed to stop them reaching the embassy, elements of the crowd vandalised cars and telephone booths.

Another group of 4,000 Palestinians shouting Death to Israel clashed with riot police at Amman’s Wehdat refugee camp. The crowd hurled petrol bombs and stones at riot police, who responded with tear gas.

Palestinian supporters also rallied in the north Egyptian city of Alexandria, Lebanon, Syria and Iran as Israel’s offensive in the West Bank entered its second week.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged Muslim states to use oil as a lever of influence on countries that support Israel.

‘‘I suggest, only for one month, as a symbolic gesture, that Arab and Islamic countries switch off oil to all countries who have close relations with Israel,’’ Khamenei said in a Friday prayers sermon in Tehran.

In Saudi Arabia, the English-language Arab News daily said that President Bush’s intervention ‘‘does not seem to be anything more than a fig leaf to disguise American inaction.’’

‘‘The Bush administration had better start getting its priorities right. It has to rein in the Israelis - and, for its own future credibility in the Muslim world, must be seen to be doing so,’’ the paper said in an editorial.

Support for Bush came from Jordanian Prime Minister Ali Abul-Ragheb who welcomed the president’s dispatch of Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region and his call on Israel to withdraw.

‘‘This direct American intercession in the dangerous situation in the region caused by the Israeli aggression on the Palestinian people is a positive step,’’ Abul-Ragheb said in a statement.

Meanwhile, in the port of Aqaba, southern Jordan, King Abdullah attended prayers for the ‘‘souls of the martyrs’’ - the Palestinians killed in the past 18 months of fighting with Israel.

Following the prayers, Abdullah addressed a telethon that he initiated to raise funds for wounded Palestinians. ‘‘I tell them (Palestinians) that their steadfastness and their heroism is a source of pride to the whole Arab nation,’’ Abdullah said.

In Cairo, scores of riot police blocked the exit to Al-Azhar Mosque, making sure the demonstrators did not take to the streets.

But later, people who had left the mosque quietly, reassembled and tried to revive the demonstration. Police officers charged with batons, kicking some protesters and chasing others down side streets.

In Damascus, Syria’s Mufti Ahmed Kiftaro defended Palestinian suicide bombers who have struck Israeli targets repeatedly during the past 10 days.

Kiftaro said such operations were ‘‘the only available means of opposing Zionist planes, tanks, artillery and mass-destruction weapons.’’

Outside the capital, about 5,000 people marched from a Palestinian refugee camp toward the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a demonstration of support for the Palestinians.

‘‘We either live together or die together,’’ shouted the protesters, who were both Palestinians and Syrians

In Riyadh, a Saudi cleric, Sheikh Abdullah bin Salman al-Munei, hailed the suicide attacks on national television, saying they were ‘‘blessed operations.’’