By Adel Iqley, IOL Morocco Correspondent

RABAT, January 12 (IslamOnline) – Some 10,000 people took to the streets of Rabat on Sunday, January 12, to protest against the growing U.S. threats to launch a military offensive against Iraq.

Braving the heavy rains gripping the Moroccan capital, the protesters also shouted slogans against the Arab governments’ silence towards the rising tone of the U.S. war threats that widely expected to materialize within late February’s timeframe.

“Believers should stand united and extend their hands to one another” and “The American Storm is coming soon,” read some of the banners clearly hoisted among the large masses in the demonstration, organized by the Iraq Support Initiative, a group made up of Morocco’s political and cultural institutions.

“Although the demonstrations was local, not nation-wide, large numbers of people showed up to voice their denunciation of the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian areas, the crimes committed by the Israeli army against the Palestinians in one hand and the expected U.S. criminal military campaign against the Iraqis,” Khalid Al-Sufyani, an Iraq Support Initiative Secretariat member, told IslamOnline during the march.

“We are here to join our voices to say: No for the U.S.-Zionist terrorism, No for the new Zionist colonial project in our region that plans to maintain a grip on its riches,” he said angrily.

But Fatahallah Arsalane, official spokesman of the Al Adl Wal Ihssane party said the march only comes as a “stopover on an extensive tour” that would also take the protests to the front of some of the embassies in the capital.

There were marches outside the Qatari embassy and the UN office and another was planned to take place outside the MacDonalds restaurant in Rabat on January 16. Moreover, the flare of the protests is expected to catch other Moroccan cities.

With regards to the Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul’s current tour of the region, Arsalane was rather skeptical, saying the trip is only meant to bring the Arab countries to their knees and give up all reserve of resistance against before the world’s only superpower.

“This popular protests shows the decrease of the spirit of struggle among the Arab regimes and the failure of the political work in this country,” said Dr.Al-Mahdi Al-Mungara, a Moroccan intellectual who joined hands with the demonstrators.