Protests across Mideast as US' Arab allies warn against pushing Palestinians out

Protests erupted around the Arab world on Friday as the Gaza war raged and an Israeli ground operation with the potential to displace millions of Palestinians loomed.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the West Bank after Islamic Friday prayers to protest Israel's actions in its war on Hamas.

The war has so far killed 4,127 people in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza. It was launched by Israel in retaliation for an October 7 attack on the country by Gaza's Hamas rulers - Israeli authorities say 1,400 people were killed and around 200 were taken hostage.

Israel's strikes and calls for Gazans to evacuate the north of the strip have prompted more than a million people to flee the area, raising concern about the prospect of displacement of millions of the enclave's Palestinians, most of whom are already registered as refugees as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Those fears have been heightened amid charged rhetoric by Israeli officials, who say Gaza will no longer be the same after Hamas is eliminated. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said the US was in talks with Egypt and Israel about establishing a humanitarian corridor at the Egypt-controlled Rafah border crossing for Americans and other civilians in Gaza to flee.

In a sign of the growing anger over the Israeli operation in Gaza, Egypt sanctioned its first major nationwide protest in a decade. Hundreds of protesters gathered Friday near downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square in support of Palestinians, and demonstrations occurred in other Egyptian cities

Some of the Cairo protesters chanted, "Where is the Arab army?" and, "Here they are, the Zionists," referring to Egypt's riot police, who pushed demonstrators into nearby Bab el-Louk Square and closed access to Tahrir.