Several hundred people demonstrated and expressed support for the Palestinian cause in Oslo on Saturday as Israel faced Norway in a football World Cup qualifier, AFP journalists reported.Activists briefly unfurled a giant Palestinian flag and a large banner reading “Let Children Live” inside the Ullevaal Stadium, where only several dozen Israeli fans could be seen waving their country’s flag and a banner reading “Let the Ball Talk!”.A pro-Palestinian activist was forcibly removed from the stands.Whistling could be heard during the Israeli national anthem and the Israeli players were booed before the game.Several hours before the match, hundreds of people attended a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Oslo, chanting “Free Palestine” to protest against Israel’s “genocide”.Many demonstrators wore Palestinian keffiyeh shawls draped over their shoulders and waved Palestinian flags as they gathered in the city centre before marching to the stadium.Smoke flares were lit but the atmosphere remained calm.”The message today is to say we give the red card to Israel, to apartheid, and to genocide,” said Line Khateeb, the head of the Norwegian Committee for Palestine, one of the organisers of the protest.”We do not accept football being used to whitewash war crimes, as we see today when Israel participates in the World Cup qualification games,” she told AFP.Demonstrators carried banners reading “Exclude Israel from International Football”, “From the River to the Sea”, “Red Card to Israel” and “It’s a Genocide, Not a War”.”Israel has been committing genocide for the last two years and killing indiscriminately, doing the most horrible thing that could be imaginable,” one of the demonstrators, Munib Sarwar, a 40-year-old engineer, told AFP.”We need to show solidarity with the children and the people of Gaza who have been terrorised for the last two years,” he added. Organisers decided to go ahead with the demonstration despite the Gaza ceasefire deal reached Thursday between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.”It’s not the end of the occupation. It doesn’t mean the West Bank is free. It doesn’t mean Palestine is free. We need to keep pushing and putting sanctions on Israel to hold them accountable in order to have a proper free Palestine,” Khateeb said.Heavy security was in place for the match. Dozens of police officers on horseback and others in riot gear were posted near the stadium, an AFP journalist saw.The head of the Norwegian football association, Lise Klaveness, recently said she was pushing “for Israel to be sanctioned”.”Personally, I think that if Russia is excluded, Israel should be as well,” she said in a Norwegian podcast.  Several days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, UEFA and FIFA agreed to exclude Russian teams and clubs from all international competitions, a sanction that remains in place.The Norwegian Football Association has previously said it would donate the proceeds from the ticket sales for Saturday’s match to Doctors Without Borders.With five victories in five matches, Norway top Group I of European qualifying with 15 points ahead of Italy and Israel, who both have nine points.

Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in London on Saturday, expressing scepticism and cautious hope as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza entered its second day.Elsewhere, about 5,500 people marched in Berlin, according to police, while some 500 turned out in Vienna, shouting “Free Palestine” and brandishing Palestinian flags, in another weekend of protests across Europe.  “We’re… sharing the relief of the Palestinian people,” said Ben Jamal, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which has organised massive monthly pro-Palestinian rallies in London since the start of the war two years ago.”But we also come here sharing their trepidation that this ceasefire will not hold, rooted in the knowledge that Israel has violated every ceasefire agreement it’s ever signed,” Jamal told AFP.Despite concerns about President Donald Trump’s proposed peace plan for Gaza — calling for a transitional authority headed by the US leader — Jamal said there was an “immense sense of relief”.A sea of red and green, the colours of the Palestinian flag, formed along the embankment of the River Thames in central London, where the largely peaceful march began.Protesters donned black-and-white keffiyeh scarves, carrying signs of “Stop Starving Gaza” and “Stop the genocide”, and chanting “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.A group of counter-protesters waving Israeli flags blared loud music as the main demonstration marched towards Whitehall. London police said a “small number of arrests” were made during scuffles between the two groups.In Berlin, where some 60,000 people marched two weeks ago, the largely peaceful protest saw some accuse the German government — a staunch Israel ally — of “being on the wrong side of history”.- ‘Eyes on Gaza’ -The war in Gaza was sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israel figures.Israel’s military response has killed at least 67,682 people, most of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the UN considers reliable.The conflict has sparked a humanitarian crisis and the UN has declared famine conditions in parts of Gaza.”I’m here with my friends to help show that there is, continuously, eyes on Gaza, even considering the current ceasefire,” said Katrina Scales, a 23-year-old sociology and psychology student.She added a ceasefire was “not enough”, and that she planned to keep attending marches.Trade unionist Steve Headley, in his fifties, was also unconvinced. “Hopefully now we’ve got the first steps towards peace, but we’ve been here before,” Headley told AFP. He questioned Trump’s “plans for a ‘riviera’ in Gaza” that the US president had touted earlier this year.For 74-year-old Miranda Finch, part of a group marching under the banner of “descendants of Holocaust survivors against Gaza genocide”, the ceasefire was “very little”.”The Palestinians are not going back to nothing. They’re going back to less than nothing. Rubble on top of bodies, on top of sewage.”Fabio Capogreco, 42, who was attending his fifth demonstration with his two children and wife, said the ceasefire was “too little, too late”, adding that those complicit in the war needed to be held accountable.”Hopefully it’s one of the last times we need to come here to manifest,” said the bar manager. “But I think it’s too early to say everything is ok.”

Hundreds of thousands of war-weary Palestinians returned to a devastated Gaza City on Saturday, with families picking their way through rubble-strewn streets only to find many of their homes in ruins.On the second day of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the scale of the recovery operation was daunting, even as negotiations and preparations for a prisoner swap continued.US President Donald Trump is due in the Middle East in the next two days to celebrate the promised release of Israeli hostages — still held in Gaza two years after Hamas’s October 7 attack — and to promote the next phase of his plan.But in an early sign that much political wrangling remains, a senior Hamas official told AFP that it was “out of the question” that the Palestinian Islamist movement would disarm, as required by the plan, even if it steps aside from Gaza’s government.- ‘Stood and cried’ -A part of Trump’s deal was completed on Friday when Israel agreed a ceasefire and withdrew its forces from parts of Gaza, allowing displaced families to begin trekking back to their homes, many of them wrecked by Israeli bombardments. According to Gaza’s civil defence agency, a rescue service operating under Hamas authority, more than 500,000 people had returned to Gaza City by Saturday evening.”We walked for hours, and every step was filled with fear and anxiety for my home,” Raja Salmi, 52, told AFP.When she reached the Al-Rimal neighbourhood, she found her house utterly destroyed.”I stood before it and cried. All those memories are now just dust,” she said.Aerial footage of the city filmed by AFP showed whole city blocks reduced to a twisted mess of concrete and steel reinforcing wire, the walls and windows of five-storey apartment blocks ripped off and left choking the roadsides as disconsolate residents returned.The United Nations humanitarian office says Israel has allowed agencies to start transporting 170,000 tonnes of aid into Gaza if the ceasefire holds.The top US officer in the Middle East, CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper, visited Gaza on Saturday to discuss setting up what he described on social media as a “civil-military coordination center” which will “support conflict stabilisation.”The US military will coordinate a multinational taskforce which will deploy in Gaza and is likely to include troops from Egypt, Qatar, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates — but no American boots on the ground inside the territory itself.Under the ceasefire deal pushed by Trump, Hamas has until noon on Monday to hand over 47 remaining Israeli hostages — living and dead — from the 251 abducted during its October 7 attack on Israel two years ago. The remains of one more hostage, held in Gaza since 2014, are also expected to be returned.In exchange, Israel will release 250 prisoners, including some of those serving life sentences for deadly anti-Israeli attacks, and 1,700 Gazans detained by the military since the war broke out.The Israeli prison service said Saturday it had moved the 250 national security detainees to the prisons of Ofer, in the occupied West Bank, and Ketziot in southern Israel’s Negev desert, ahead of the handover.  – ‘Ghost town’ -Many parts of the Trump proposal still have not been agreed, including its plans for post-war governance, and its insistence that Hamas disarm.At Al-Rantisi hospital in Gaza City, a facility for children and cancer patients, AFP footage showed wards reduced to heaps of overturned metal beds, gaping ceilings and scattered medical equipment.”I don’t know what to say. The images speak louder than any words: destruction, destruction, and more destruction,” said Saher Abu Al-Atta, a resident who had returned to the city.Men, women and children navigated streets filled with rubble, searching for homes amid collapsed concrete slabs, destroyed vehicles and debris.While some returned in vehicles, most walked, carrying belongings in bags strapped to their shoulders.Sami Musa, 28, returned alone to check on his family’s house.”Thank God… I found that our home is still standing, though it has suffered some damage that we can repair,” Musa told AFP.Nonetheless, the destruction in Gaza City left him shocked but determined to rebuild.”It felt like a ghost town, not Gaza,” Musa said. “The smell of death still lingers in the air.”Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 67,682 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, figures the United Nations considers credible.The data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.The war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.str-vid-al-jd/dc/jsa