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Protesters have staged rallies around the world to voice their anger as the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip entered a third week.

Thousands of protesters marched on the Israeli embassy in Britain, while others took to the streets of Germany, France, Lebanon, Australia and the West Bank.

Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull, reporting from London, said that the number of protesters in London was far bigger than at previous demonstrations in the UK capital.

"That is an indication of how far things have moved on in the last week, deteriorating quite rapidly in the Gaza Strip with the Israeli ground offensive," he said.

"That has filtered through to public opinion with far more people coming out onto the streets in London and capital cities across Europe.

"There have been calls for the Israeli embassy to be closed down, for diplomatic ties between the United Kingdom and Israel to be broken."

Palestinian cause

One of the protesters told Al Jazeera that she had not been able to contact her family in the Gaza Strip for five days.

"I don't what has happened to them, are they alive, are they not alive?" she said.

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"That crowd of 100,000 people, probably more, has come out today to show their support to the Palestinian people despite the fact that all the leaders are not supporting the Palestinian cause and are supporting Israel.

"We will outnumber the leaders ... and we will do whatever we can. We will boycott Israeli goods, we will demand, we will protest and protest and protest as much as we can until we free the Palestinian people."

The rally was backed by Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of London, who has called on European nations to withdraw their ambassadors from Israel and suspend trade agreements with the Jewish state.

Tens of thousands of people chanting "We are all Palestinians" joined a protest in the French capital Paris.

"We want to point to the hypocrisy of an international community which votes for tons of resolutions that it never enforces," Olivier Besancenot, leader of France's Revolutionary Communist League, said.

Elsewhere in France, pro-Palestinian rallies were held in Lille, Grenoble, Nice and Toulouse.

Engin Karahan, one of the organisers of a march in the German city of Duisburg, said the protesters wanted to show "our solidarity with the victims in the Gaza Strip, and signal our opposition to the oppression and violence in Gaza".

The demonstrators, many from the large ethnic Turkish community, called for an immediate end to the violence and a lifting of the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

More than 6,000 demonstrators gathered in the German capital Berlin, and other rallies were held in Munich and Cologne.

Protests in Americas

Later, at least 10,000 people gathered in a park in Washington DC to voice their solidarity for the Palestinian people.

At least 10,000 people gathered in Washington to voice their solidarity with Gaza [Gallo/Getty]
"The United States has a role to play because US weapons are being used ... so we need a drastic policy change," Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party nominee in the recent presidential contest, said.

The protesters descended on the White House, chanting "free Palestine" as protest leaders and activists spoke from a podium.

"There are many young people. We feel it's one of the most important demonstrations for Palestine ever in the US," said Eugene Puryear, a coordinator of the Washington protest, which was organised by the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) coalition.

Protesters waived Palestinian flags, wore keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headdress, and waived signs, some of which read "Stop the Gaza holocaust" and "Free Palestine, let Gaza live."

They then led a march passing in front of the headquarters of The Washington Post newspaper to protest "its hard pro-Israeli line," Puryear said, before heading to the offices of construction equipment giant Caterpillar and military contractor Lockheed Martin.

A dozen buses filled with protesters came from New Jersey and another seven buses drove in from New York.

Thousands more protested across several Canadian cities, calling for an "immediate ceasefire" and especially targeting conservative Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, for his support of Israel.

In Montreal, some 2,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators chanted "Israel the assassin" and called for a ceasefire in the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Some brandished dolls spattered with red paint that they said represented children killed by the Israeli army.

Several hundred protesters also gathered in front of the US embassy in Mexico City in opposition to what they called the "criminal aggression" in Gaza.

Some protesters set shoes ablaze and hurled them against the embassy gates.

'Nation's battle'

Almost 20,000 demonstrators carrying Lebanese and Palestinian flags marched through the streets of the Lebanese market town of Nabatiyeh in a rally organised by the Hezbollah group, which fought a 34-day war with Israeli in 2006.

Protesters in London burned placards outside the Israeli embassy [Reuters]
"Gaza is the nation's battle," read one banner carried by the demonstrators.

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken part in protests that have been staged every day since Israel began to bombard the Gaza Strip 15 days ago.

In the city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, hundreds of Palestinian children took to the streets calling for an end to the war.

Palestinian youths also gathered in East Jerusalem.

"It is to [express] our anger about the massacre in Gaza, this voice ... [says] Jerusalem is part of the Palestinian territories [and] that Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian state," Hatem Abdel Al-Qader, an adviser to the Palestinian prime minister, said.

"It is a big voice ... that supports our citizens in Gaza against the Israeli massacre."

Several hundred people rallied outside the Israeli embassy in the Australian capital of Canberra, throwing shoes at the building and chanting "Free Palestine".

Human Rights Watch has called on Israel to stop using white phosphorus which it says has been used in military operations in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

The US-based group said that its researchers observed the use of the chemical, which can burn away human flesh to the bone, over Gaza City and Jabaliya on Friday and Saturday.

"We went by Israeli artillery units that had white phosphorus rounds with the fuses in them," Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera.

"Clearly it is [white phosphorus], we can tell by the explosions and the tendrils that go down [and] the fires that were burning," he said.

"Today there were massive attacks in Jabaliya when we were there. We saw that there were numerous fires once the white phosphorus had gone in."
'Obscurant'

International law permits the use of white phopshorus as an "obscurant" to cover troop movements and prevent enemies from using certain guided weapons, but its use is controversial as it can injure people through painful chemical burns.
Even if they are using it as an obscurant, they are using it in a very densely populated area," Garlasco said.

"The problem is it covers such a wide area that when the white phosphorus wafers come down, over 100 in each artillery shell, they burn everything they touch and they don't stop burning until they are done.

"You are talking about skin damage, potentially homes going on fire, damage to infrastructure."

Human Rights Watch said that it believed the use of the chemical in Gaza violated the requirement under international humanitarian law to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian injury and loss of life.

The Israeli military has previously denied using white phosphorus during the 15-day offensive in the Gaza Strip, but has said that any munitions that it does use comply with international law.

Israel used white phophorus during its 34-day war against Lebanon's Hezbollah movement in 2006, while the United States used it during the controversial siege of the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004.