Alarming.

Gaza carnage spreads anger across Mideast, alarming US allies and threatening to widen conflict

Jordanian police have fired tear gas to disperse thousands of people protesting in an area around the Israeli embassy in Amman after a deadly Gaza hospital blast that killed hundreds of people. (Oct. 18) (AP video: Omar Akour)

CAIRO (AP) — Within hours after a blast was said to have killed hundreds at a Gaza hospital, protesters hurled stones at Palestinian security forces in the occupied West Bank and at riot police in neighboring Jordan, venting fury at their leaders for failing to stop the carnage.

A summit planned in Jordan on Wednesday between U.S. President Joe Biden, Jordan’s King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was canceled after Abbas withdrew in protest.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spent much of the past week meeting with Arab leaders to try to ease tensions, but those efforts are now in doubt following the hospital blast. The raw nerve of decades of Palestinian suffering, left exposed by U.S.-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and Arab states, is throbbing once again, threatening broader unrest.

“This war, which has entered a dangerous phase, will plunge the region into an unspeakable disaster,” warned Abdullah, who is among the closest Western allies in the Mideast.

Palestinians arrive to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, after arriving from al-Ahli hospital following an explosion there, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023. The Hamas-run Health Ministry says an Israeli airstrike caused the explosion that killed hundreds at al-Ahli, but the Israeli military says it was a misfired Palestinian rocket. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)

What we know about the deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital

President Joe Biden boards Air Force One for a trip to Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2023, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Biden will stress humanitarian aid, avoiding deeper conflict in Israel but is scrapping Jordan stop

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, right, is greeted by Israel’s Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant as he arrives at the Ministry of Defense, Friday, Oct. 13, 2023, in Tel Aviv. Austin is in Israel for meetings with senior government leaders and to see firsthand some of the U.S. weapons and security assistance that Washington rapidly delivered to Israel in the first week of its war with the militant Hamas group. (AP Photos/Lolita Baldor)

Blinken and Austin bolster US support for Israel as potential ground offensive in Gaza looms

There were conflicting claims of who was responsible for the hospital blast. Gaza officials were quick to condemn the Israeli airstrikes. Israel denies involvement and has released video, audio and other information showing the explosion was caused by a misfired missile by Islamic Jihad, another militant group active in the Gaza Strip. Islamic Jihad rejected this claim.

The Associated Press has not independently verified any claims or evidence provided by the parties.

Speaking in Tel Aviv, Biden said the blast appeared to have been caused by "some other team" and not Israel.

But there was no doubt among the Arab protesters who gathered in several countries late Tuesday to condemn what they saw as an Israeli atrocity.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has been under lockdown since a bloody Oct. 7 rampage by Hamas militants ignited the war, protesters clashed with Palestinian security forces and called for the overthrow of Abbas.

Israel and the West have long viewed Abbas as a partner in reducing tensions, but his Palestinian Authority is widely seen by Palestinians as a corrupt and autocratic accomplice to Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank.

Jordan, long considered a bastion of stability in the region, has seen mass protests in recent days. On Tuesday evening, pro-Palestinian protesters attempted to storm the Israeli embassy.

“They are all normalizing the Arab rulers. None of them are free, and the free people are all dead!” one protester shouted. “Arab countries can do nothing!”

Egypt was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel in the late 1970s. Jordan followed in 1994.

Thousands of students gathered at Egyptian universities on Wednesday to condemn Israel's airstrikes in Gaza. Protesters in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities chanted “Death to Israel” and “With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for you, Al-Aqsa,” referring to a contested Jerusalem holy site. A smaller protest was held near the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday.

Such protests are rare in Egypt, where authorities have clamped down on dissent for over a decade. But fears that Israel could push Gaza’s 2.3 million residents into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and soaring consumer prices due to runaway inflation, could prove a volatile mix in the country, where a popular uprising toppled a U.S.-backed autocrat in 2011.

Protests also erupted in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has traded fire with Israeli forces at the border, threatening to enter the war with its massive arsenal of rockets. Hundreds of protesters clashed with Lebanese security forces outside the U.S. embassy in Beirut on Wednesday, with riot police hurling dozens of tear gas and water cannons to disperse the protesters.

Protests also took place in Morocco and Bahrain, which established diplomatic relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords three years ago.

“The Arab streets have a voice. In the past, regional and Western governments may have ignored these voices, but they can no longer do so,” said Badr al-Saif, a history professor at Kuwait University. “People are burning.”

Just a few weeks ago, the local outlook looked very different.