The Lebanese Army and United Nations peacekeepers were on alert yesterday along Lebanon’s volatile southern border with Israel as protests erupted throughout the Arab world.

Israeli jets flew low-level sorties over south Lebanon, an apparent muscle-flexing gesture to deter reprisal rocket attacks into northern Israel by Lebanon-based militants.

Hezbollah, the militant Shia group, has led calls of condemnation in Lebanon, declaring that the Israeli aerial assault on the Gaza Strip, was a “war crime and represents genocide”.

The high casualty toll in Gaza spurred thousands of Arab protesters to take to the streets. In Beirut, hundreds of flag-waving Hezbollah supporters demonstrated near the Egyptian Embassy, protesting at what they saw as a tacit green light given by some Arab countries for the Israeli attack on Hamas. Police used teargas to keep demonstrators from approaching the embassy.

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It is Hamas’ actions that have precipitated the current, inevitable, crisis

Richard Beeston, Foreign Editor

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• Gaza violence

“What is happening in Gaza today is an Israeli-US war, with Arab collusion, to deprive the Palestinians of their rights,” Nawaf Mussawi, Hezbollah’s chief of international relations, told Lebanon’s New TV. Osama Hamdan, the head of Hamas in Lebanon, told a crowd of demonstrators outside the UN offices in central Beirut that the militant group had no choice but to continue “resisting” Israel. The crowd responded with chants of “death to Israel”.

In Tehran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued a fatwa to Muslims around the world to “defend the Palestinians in any way possible”.

He said: “Whoever is killed in this legitimate defence is considered a martyr.”

In the Syrian capital, Damascus, 5,000 people demonstrated against Israel and burnt US and Israeli flags. In neighbouring Jordan, several thousand lawyers marched on the parliament building, demanding the expulsion of the Israeli Ambassador and the closure of the embassy.

“No for peace, yes to the rifle,” they chanted.

Hamas and Fatah, the moderate Palestinian group, said that they had set aside their bitter rivalry. “The retaliation against Israel comes from all the Palestinians being united now,” said Mounir Moqdah, a Fatah commander.

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