ISLAMABAD: Prominent Pakistani religiopolitical party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan (JI) is expected to hold a protest march outside the US embassy in Islamabad and its consulates in other parts of the country today, Friday, against Washington’s support for Israel’s fresh strikes in Gaza that have killedover 500 people this week and threatened to disrupt the fragile ceasefire in the enclave. 

Since Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes have killed 510 Palestinians, with more than half of them women and children, a health official in Gaza said. The Israeli military said on Thursday it had begun conducting ground activities in the northern Gaza Strip, along the coastal route in the area of Beit Lahia.

The latest escalation is a blow to the ceasefire agreement reached between Israel and Hamas on Jan. 15 following more than a year of Israeli airstrikes that flattened much of Gaza’s infrastructure, including schools, hospitals and residential neighborhoods. Around 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza were killed during the 15-month war that began in October 2023. 

“We will march toward all American consulates and its embassy in Islamabad,” Naeem-ur-Rehman, the head of the party, said at a news conference on Thursday. “We will protest and our protest will be peaceful.”

He pointed out that protests outside consulates and embassies take place worldwide, wondering why authorities in Pakistan do not allow the same to take place. 

“It will be a peaceful [protest] from our side but it is the government’s responsibility to ensure the situation remains peaceful and it allows this peaceful protest to take place,” Rehman said. “So that just like the entire world is standing against oppressors, Pakistan can also contribute to it.”

This is not the first time that the JI has announced a rally outside the US embassy to protest Israel’s bombardment in Gaza. In May last year, Islamabad police prevented JI supporters from marching toward the US embassy in Islamabad to protest against Israel’s airstrikes in Gaza. 

Police used batons on the demonstrators, angering hundreds of rallygoers who briefly blocked a key road and later staged a sit-in near a high-security area where foreign embassies and the offices of president, prime minister and parliament are located.

JI students posted videos on social media, claiming they were beaten by police who did not allow them to go toward the American embassy for a peaceful rally. 

Pakistan does not have diplomatic relations with Israel and has frequently criticized it for its military operations in Gaza. 

Pakistan’s ambassador at the UN, Munir Akram, this week called for the resumption of humanitarian aid to the Palestinian enclave and the need for a revival of negotiations leading to a two-state solution. 

He also called for an independent Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital.