Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: So What Does Protest Mean?

See also Libya Snapshot: The TV Producer Keeping Qaddafi on the Air
Turkey-Israel Feature: Why There is a Downward Spiral in Relations
Friday's Syria, Libya (and Beyond) LiveBlog: Expecting Defiance, Watching for Defections

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2035 GMT: Footage of a protest in Idlib in northwest Syria tonight:

2030 GMT: Jon Williams of the BBC writes, "Disappointed [that] Syria continues to refuse BBC entry. Colleague deported overnight. Will continue to demand access for international reporters."

1849 GMT: The women of Taiz, Yemen, stage a protest rally:

1838 GMTL The Libyan oil minister has said that oil production will restart within the next 3 or 4 days, and the country could be up to full output by the end of the year.

1727 GMT: A sobering milestone in Syria:

The death toll in Syria from the crackdown on protests has topped 3,000, according to activist Radwan Ziadeh.

"More than 3,000 people ... the majority of them civilians, have been killed in 112 Syrian towns and cities," Ziadeh, head of the Washington-based Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria, said in Tunis on Saturday.

They included 123 aged under 18, he added. [AFP]

1624 GMT: James Miller takes the liveblog. Big thanks to Scott Lucas for setting up the morning and afternoon.

Nabil Elaraby of the Arab League said today that the League had reached an agreement with Syrian President Bashar al Assad to end months of bloodshed. According to Elaraby, Assad is being pushed to increase the pace that the government is adopting reforms.

So far, few specifics have been released. Somehow, it's hard to imagine that reforms will satisfy the protesters, who have already lost too many of their own to Assad's security forces.

1400 GMT: The Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, has arrived in Syria for talks with President Assad.

1340 GMT:A march in Taiz in Yemen today, chanting "Death rather than humiliation":

1335 GMT: Forces of the Libyan Government have launched another attack on the Qaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid in Libya, returning to positions outside the town with their first group of prisoners.

On Friday, the fighters met fierce resistance from up to 600 Qaddafi troops, who fired rockets and grenades.

After more volunteers joined the fighters, they moved on Saturday on the town, emerging in a pick-up truck with seven prisoners, including a brigadier.

After the fighters pulled out of the town, at least five NATO airstrikes were heard in the area.

AFP reports that Qaddafi loyalists launched a counter-attack on Friday against the town of Red Valley, which was claimed by Government fighters on Thursday.

Red Valley is 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Muammar Qaddafi's hometown of Sirte.

1330 GMT: Al Arabiya is reporting that the Egypt's ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has rejected the resignation of Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.

1120 GMT: Sue Turton of Al Jazeera English reports on the fighters looking to take the Qaddafi stronghold of Bani Walid in Libya:

1115 GMT: The Egyptian Ministry of Health has updated the casualty figures from last night's protest outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo to three dead and 1049 injured.

0920 GMT: Human Rights Watch has said that Thursday's discovery of 18 bodies buried in western Libya corroborates reports that detainees held by Qaddafi forces suffocated to death in June.

The June incident occured in al-Khoms, about 120 kilometers east of Tripoli, with the bodies in a remote area between the towns of Bani Walid and Orban. Officials said a captured Qaddafi soldier led them to the spot.

The bodies are apparently those of men ranging in age from 23 to 50 who died on 6 June when they were held in two metal shipping containers, according to two survivors. Another victim perished days later.

Local journalists showed Human Rights Watch a video, taken from the cell phone of a Qaddafi soldier, which shows three men in green military uniforms kicking and whipping six bound and blindfolded men in a metal container.

Two survivors of the assaults said they were attacked with electric shocks and beaten with sticks, kicks, punches, and shoes to the head, as well as being hung upside down.

0840 GMT: The Egyptian Ministry of Health says two people died, and 988 were injured in the protests outside the Israeli Embassy in Cairo last night.

An Israeli official has said that Egyptian commandos rescued six Israeli citizens at the embassy, before the complex was evacuated.

0710 GMT: A delegation from Yemen's governing party has traveled to Saudi Arabia, seeking to persuade President Ali Abdullah Saleh to make a move to break the political stalemate.

A Government spokesman said, “The delegation will meet with President Saleh in order to discuss a proposed implementation for the GCC [Gulf Co-operation Council] initiative.”

The GCC plan, presented this spring, was for Saleh to hand power to his Vice President in a transitional government. The President balked at the last minute on several occasions over signing the agreement, before he was seriously injured in a bombing on 1 June.

The delegation’s visit comes after leaders in Yemen’s governing party split between those who want to see a full transfer of presidential powers to the Vice President and a group of hard-liners who are objecting.

0655 GMT: Israel has withdrawn its ambassador from Cairo after last night's protests outside the Embassy.

0545 GMT: Activists claim Moroccan blogger and web programmer Mohamed Douas was arrested on Monday morning in the city of Fnidaq. The arrest may be related to Wikileaks Fnidaq, a website Douas helped create to present documents about alleged corruption within the local administration.

0530 GMT: On Friday, fighters of the new Libyan Government moved into the town of Bani Walid, one of the last positions of pro-Qaddafi forces. Hoda Abdel-Hamid reports on the fighting:

0500 GMT: Last night, a reader asked us about the latest protests in Syria, "What are your feelings of the importance of what happened today?"

I have to be honest: for all the dozens of videos that we posted, for all the drama of the slogans beyond the opening call for "international protection" of the challenge to the Syrian regime, for all the demonstrations of persistence, I cannot make a grand conclusion.

As James Miller has pointed out effectively, the very fact that the protests have been sustained in the face of a crackdown bringing thousands of deaths and detentions is significant. Yet demonstrations in the heart of Damascus and in Aleppo, Syria's second city, are still limited, and despite the rise in defections, the core of the Syrian military has not cracked. So this is not a Libya, with the opposition establishing a base in a large city for sustained operations, or an Egypt, with a Tahrir Square occupation in the centre of the capital, or even a Tunisia.

That same question about the significance of protest can be applied elsewhere. What does it mean that, seven months after the fall of the Mubarak regime, demonstrations in Cairo turned from a challenge to the military rulers to a move on the Israeli embassy last night, once again taking down Israel's flag and knocking down parts of the wall around the building? 

What does it mean that once again on Friday hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, largely forgotten by the international media, continue to take to the streets to voice calls for change?

And what does it mean that, in the day's protest which was almost unnoticed, the Bahraini opposition party Al Wefaq could bring out a large rally to voice its criticism of the regime --- months after the February uprising had supposedly been quashed?