Tunisians Rally for Gaza Ceasefire

More than a thousand people, including many women and children, demonstrated evening on the occasion of Land Day in central Tunis to demand a ceasefire in Gaza, chanting “Stop genocide.”

Land Day commemorates the death in 1976 of six Arabs who were demonstrating against Israel's confiscation of their lands.

The demonstrators chanted on Habib Bourguiba Street in the center of the capital, “Stop the genocide,” “Down with France, the United States, and the Zionists,” and “Expel the ambassadors of the countries complicit in the genocide.”

The demonstration came in response to a call from the Tunisian General Labor Union and other organizations such as the “Tunisian Network to Confront the Normalization System” between Tunisia and Israel.

Demonstrators, many of whom wore keffiyehs around their necks or waved Palestinian flags, chanted, "The people of Tunisia are a free people and normalization will not pass."

Tunisia, which hosted the Palestine Liberation Organization led by Yasser Arafat from 1982 to 1994, strongly supports the Palestinian cause.

In October and November, thousands of Tunisians demonstrated in support of the Palestinians, and President Kais Saied denounced the “unacceptable situation” in the Gaza Strip.

He also described any normalization with Israel as “high treason,” denying himself the accusation of anti-Semitism. Parliament began discussing a draft law criminalizing normalization in November, but discussions have been suspended since then.

On October 7, Hamas forces carried out an attack on southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, leaving about 1,140 people dead, most of them civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on official Israeli figures.

In response to the attack, Israel launched a military campaign in the Gaza Strip that killed more than 32,700 people, most of them women and minors, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.