Iran rallies for Palestinians, against Israel
July 25, 2014
Demonstrations were staged in Tehran and more than 700 towns and cities across the country on the last Friday of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, state television reported.
In the capital, footage showed demonstrators carrying placards saying "Death to Israel" and "Death to America" converging from nine different points on Tehran University in the city centre.
"Quds Day" (Jerusalem Day) is staged annually on the last Friday of Ramadan, but this year´s protest came on the 18th day of Israel´s campaign against rocket-firing militants in the Gaza Strip.
More than 800 Palestinian civilians have been killed in the assault on Gaza and the Islamist Hamas, a key Iran ally.
Projectiles fired into Israel have killed three civilians -- two Israelis and a Thai migrant worker -- and fighting in and around Gaza has killed 32 Israeli soldiers.
Iran does not recognise Israel´s existence, and supports Palestinian Islamist groups that fight it.
On Thursday, the speaker of Iran´s parliament, Ali Larijani, told state television´s Arabic service that Tehran had provided Hamas with the technology it has used to rain down rockets on Israel.
"Today, the fighters in Gaza have good capabilities and can meet their own needs for weapons," he said.
"But once upon a time, they needed the arms manufacture know-how and we gave it to them."
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday called on the Palestinians to keep fighting Israel and to expand their resistance from Gaza to the occupied West Bank.
During the last major conflict in and around Gaza in November 2012, Larijani said Iran was "proud" to have provided "both financial and military support" to Hamas.
Israel accused Iran of supplying Gaza militants with its Fajr-5 missile, which has a range of 75 kilometres (45 miles), for use during that conflict.
But the commander of Iran´s Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said at the time it was not the missiles that had been supplied but their technology.
