I was walking back to my Sousse hotel at about 8:00 this evening when I saw my first political demonstration in Tunisia.
There were about fifteen cars and trucks proceeding slowly along the road that leads to the sea. Men dangled out windows of the vehicles holding a roughly equal number of Tunisian and Palestinian flags. I also spied one yellow and black “R4BIA” flag of the Muslim Brotherhood. I saw no Hamas flags, however, and no guns.
Two men leaning out of either side of a pickup truck were attempting to hold a crude seven-foot replica of a Palestinian M25 Qassam rocket on the roof of the truck. It teetered and wobbled precipitously but, miraculously, didn’t fall over. The vehicles’ horns were all blowing in rhythmic unison.
There were no posters on the vehicles and the demonstrators weren’t chanting anything intelligible to me, so it was hard for me to understand precisely what was being conveyed, beyond exultant support for the Palestinian cause. Perhaps the recently-announced Gaza cease-fire between Hamas and Israel was being construed as a glorious victory for Palestine.
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