Anti-Israeli protestors burned Israel flags in Jordan, more than 15,000 Egyptians took to the streets in the southern city of Assiut, in Cairo and Alexandria to protest against Israel's retaliatory strikes on Hamas terrorist targets. Both countries have peace treaties with Israel.
Legislator Khalil Atiyeh stepped on an Israeli flag and burned it, and Yaakov Rosen, the Israeli ambassador to Jordan, was ordered to return home amid growing anti-Israeli protests in Amman and elsewhere in Jordan. Thirty Jordanian legislators demanded that Rosen be expelled from the country.
Israeli flags also were burned in Turkey and Syria. Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah urged Egyptians to take to the streets to protest in public to demand that Egypt open the Rafiah crossing.
British police arrested at least 10 people in a violent march on the Israeli embassy in London. In Denmark, nearly 1,000 protestors demonstrated in Copenhagen, where one man was arrested after throwing a firebomb at policemen. More than 1,000 people arrive at Champs Elysees in Paris and in a northern area where there is a concentration of North Africans.
Signs exclaiming, "Israel terrorist, Stop state terrorism" and "No to the Palestinian holocaust" appeared in a Madrid protest. Security was beefed up around the United States embassy in Damascus, where protestors burned American and Israeli flags.
Protests followed an initial condemnation of Hamas by the United States and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon after Israel reversed a lengthy policy of restraint in the face of escalating rocket attacks on heavily populated Israeli cities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has failed to make contact with kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit since he was abducted more than two years ago, stated, "The influx of war wounded has put a tremendous strain on Gaza's already overburdened hospitals, which are in dire need of medical equipment."
In Israel, widespread rock-throwing attacks damaged numerous Jewish vehicles in all of Israel, including the northern Galilee, the Negev, and Judea and Samaria. The IDF closed Highway 60 several times because of rocks on the road that connects Jerusalem with Gush Etzion and Kiryat Arab-Hevron. Several people, including a small baby, suffered injuries.
A woman driving on the Dimona-Be'er Sheva road suffered light wounds, and Arab threw three firebombs on Border Police vehicles near Ma'aleh Hamishah, near Jerusalem. No one was injured.