Thousands of Israeli nationalists were marching to Jerusalem’s Old City Thursday in one of the events marking what Israelis refer to as Jerusalem Day, commemorating Israel’s capture of the city.
Tens of thousands of Israeli nationalists and far-right extremists marched to Jerusalem’s Old City Thursday in an annual flag-waving march commemorating Israel’s capture of it, as tensions on the Gaza border remained high.
Palestinians in annexed east Jerusalem closed their shops and were banned from the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City, a social hub, to make way for the marchers, some of whom attacked journalists with rocks and bottles, an AFP reporter said.
Many of the marchers chanted anti-Arab slogans, like “death to Arabs”.
Following the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel annexed east Jerusalem and its Old City in a move never recognized by the international community.
Thursday’s rally took place days into a ceasefire which ended deadly cross-border fighting with Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza.
Thirty-three people, including multiple civilians, were killed in the blockaded Palestinian enclave and two in Israel, a citizen and a Gazan labourer.
Some 2,500 police officers secured the march, which began in the western part of the city before passing into east Jerusalem and through the Old City to the Western Wall, where it wrapped up.
Before the march began, Palestinians with shops in the Old City closed up for the day.
Scuffles between Jewish and Palestinian youths took place as early marchers arrived in the Old City, with police saying that in some cases forces “were required to act to prevent friction and provocations”.
But the violence was greatly reduced from last year, when at least 79 people were wounded when police clashed with Palestinian counter-protesters outside Damascus Gate.
Prior to the march, dozens of Jews, including at least three lawmakers from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and a minister from Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power faction, visited Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third-holiest site.
Jews, who call it the Temple Mount and revere it as their religion’s holiest site, are allowed to visit but not pray.
Since last year’s rally, Israel’s leadership has taken a marked shift to the far-right. Two of Netanyahu’s extreme-right cabinet members, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, attended Thursday’s march.
Ben-Gvir, the country’s national security minister, was convicted in 2007 of supporting a terrorist group and inciting racism.
Far-right ally Smotrich holds the finance portfolio along with some powers in the occupied West Bank, and also has a history of inflammatory remarks about Palestinians.
In Gaza, thousands gathered for a rival flag day on the Israeli border, many of them holding Palestinian flags. Israeli troops fired tear gas towards anyone approaching the border fence.
Roger Barake, with AFP
