Around 6,200 people gathered in Berlin on Saturday to show their support for Palestinians and mark Nakba Day earlier this week, German police said, though the numbers rose and fell in the course of the day as people joined the demonstration and others left.
Officials had initially expected some 2,000 people to commemorate the Nakba, also known as the Palestinian Catastrophe, comprising the destruction of Palestinian society and homeland in 1948 and permanent displacement of a majority of the Palestinian people. Palestinians mark Nakba Day on May 15 every year.
Some 500 officers were deployed and the police called on the demonstrators to be calm.
However they stopped the rally several times after some threw firecrackers towards officers and set off fireworks, a police spokeswoman said.
The organizers told participants to refrain from such actions, a dpa reporter saw on site. But in order to make it more difficult to document incidents, some protesters knotted banners and put up umbrellas, the police said.
The participants wanted to walk from the Kreuzberg neighbourhood towards the Rotes Rathaus city hall on Alexanderplatz, in a rally held under the banner "Palestine will be free."
Their route was originally supposed to lead to the Brandenburg Gate though this changed at short notice, police said.
One vehicle was excluded from the march as someone in the loudspeaker van shouted illegal slogans.
Many demonstrators carried Palestinian flags, others held up umbrellas in the shape of a watermelon, a symbol of support for Palestine whose flag shares the same colours, red, green, white and black.
Some people carried signs saying "Stop the genocide in Gaza" and "Stop the terror of occupation!" Others shouted "Free Palestine, Free Gaza."
The authorities had issued a number of conditions when allowing the demonstration to take place, including a ban on calls for acts of violence or defamatory slogans.
They also prohibited statements propagating the destruction of the state of Israel or flags and symbols of terrorist organizations such as the Palestinian Islamist Hamas or the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, banned from operating in Germany following the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 last year.
On Wednesday evening, around 600 people demonstrated peacefully in Charlottenburg to mark Nakba Day and there were riots in the Neukölln district later on, after some 200 people gathered there, according to the police. Some set fire to rubbish bins, and set off fireworks. Others threw bicycles and rubbish bins onto the streets.
There have been weekly demonstrations in Berlin, home to many Israelis and also with a large Muslim population, since the terrorist attack by Palestinian Islamist Hamas on Israel on October 7 last year.
As of May 17, officials have filed 1,040 cases associated with the war in Gaza, according to the Berlin public prosecutor's office.
Of these, around 210 cases relate to criminal offences committed during demonstrations on the Middle East conflict, a spokesperson for the authorities said in response to a query. The offences often involve incitement to hatred, damage to property, insults or the use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations.
Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza since the militants and other extremist groups launched the bloody raid on Israel, killing about 1,200 and kidnapping around 240.
Israel responded to the massacre with massive airstrikes and launched a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip that has killed more than 35,000 people according to the Hamas-controlled health authorities in Gaza.