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Monday saw about 400 demonstrators from the Shi'ite community on the Thon Buri side of the river, while Tuesday saw about 1,000 Sunni Muslims turn up to vent their anger towards the Jewish state.

While their demands and grievances were more or less the same, the fact that they had assembled separately raised once again the question over the nature of the split between the two camps.

The decision to protest separately and on different days, indicates the public demonstration was not centred solely on the Palestinian issue. At the least, it can be seen as part of a broader competition between two competing political and ideological camps. This, of course, is a result of the deep-rooted historical divide in the Middle East - namely the split between the Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims.

On the first day of the protests at the embassy, Bangkokian could not help but notice the poster of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hizbollah in Lebanon, whose clout and standing in the Islamic world shot up dramatically after his Shi'ite militias gave the Israeli Defence Force a run for its money.

While the decision by the Sunnis and Shi'ites in Thailand to assemble separately may be nothing more than just the preference of members of the two camps, the same cannot be said about the countries and communities in the Middle East.

The division there is more sectarian than ideological. Saudi Arabia, which is closer to Hamas ideologically, is one of the key supporters (along with Egypt and other Gulf States) of the Fatah faction, which was chased out of Gaza by Hamas. In 2006 Hamas swept the Palestinian general election in Gaza but got the cold shoulder from the world community for its refusal to recognise Israel's right to exist.

Like the Arab states, Muslims in Thailand are just as divided on the issue of Palestine and on Middle East politics in general.

If the Thai Muslims were more consolidated, the chance of them getting the wrong address could have been minimised. Tenants of Ocean Tower II thought it was funny that some of the protesting Thai Muslims demanded that the Israeli diplomats come down from the 13th floor and hear them out. Obviously, they didn't realise that the 13th floor is occupied by the Sri Lankan Embassy, not Israel's.