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1000’s of Israelis marched by Jerusalem on Thursday to have fun Israel’s seize of East Jerusalem in 1967, a contentious annual occasion, often known as Jerusalem Day, that usually stirs tensions with Palestinians, who see it as a provocation.
Giant crowds of Israelis, a lot of them from ultranationalist teams, walked by the Previous Metropolis, towards the Western Wall — a remnant of an historic retaining construction that after surrounded the holiest web site in Judaism, the Temple Mount. The parade prompted many Palestinians, who kind the overwhelming majority of Previous Metropolis residents, to close their retailers, in expectation of vandalism and abuse from the marchers.
Israeli officers say the parade is a largely peaceable and festive occasion marred by solely a small minority of individuals. However a number of teams of marchers have been filmed making threats to Arabs, and a few threw sticks and bottles for a number of minutes at Arab journalists in full view of the police, injuring at the least 4 journalists, in keeping with medics.
“Might I be avenged on Palestine,” chanted a gaggle of roughly 40 individuals, shortly earlier than the parade was formally scheduled to start out. “Might its title be erased.”
“Dying to Arabs,” chanted a number of different, equally sized teams as soon as the march was underway.
Just a few yards away, a feminine marcher shouted at Arab journalists: “That is Jewish nation solely, we don’t want Muslims right here.”
Anticipating additional unrest, the Israeli police mentioned they’d assigned 3,500 cops to safe the parade and different facet occasions. The Israeli navy additionally braced for attainable rocket hearth from Palestinian militias in Gaza, who’ve generally launched projectiles in response to the march prior to now, most notably initially of the 11-day battle in 2021 between Israel and Hamas.
Lots of of Palestinians held a counter-demonstration alongside the boundary between the enclave and Israel, prompting Israeli troopers alongside the perimeter to fireplace tear fuel at them. No less than two Palestinians have been injured.
To many Israelis, the day is a vital show of sovereignty in an historic Jewish capital that for practically 2,000 years lay exterior of Jewish management, and which they nonetheless really feel unable to utterly management. For greater than a millennium, the Temple Mount has been a Muslim holy web site — the Aqsa Mosque compound — and Jews are technically barred from praying there, even when the police informally allow them to accomplish that.
However to most Palestinians, the march — often known as the Flags Parade — is an offensive and pointless expression of dominance in an space that they, and most overseas governments, take into account occupied territory. Israel captured East Jerusalem, together with the Previous Metropolis, from Jordan in the course of the Arab-Israeli battle of 1967, and Palestinians hope it’s going to in the future kind the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The anniversary is all the time tense, however this 12 months the stakes have been raised by the unusually distinguished involvement of a number of lawmakers from the federal government, which is probably the most ultranationalist and spiritual in Israel’s historical past.
A number of lawmakers from Likud, the occasion of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, joined small teams of Jews that toured the Aqsa Mosque compound to mark the day, angering Muslims. Yitzhak Wasserlauf, a far-right cupboard minister, and Ayala Ben-Gvir, the spouse of the far-right minister for nationwide safety, Itamar Ben-Gvir, additionally visited the location. Mr. Ben-Gvir himself later joined the principle procession.
For some hard-line Israelis, these expressions of sovereignty didn’t go far sufficient. Some mentioned the hundreds of marchers ought to proceed to parade contained in the compound, and never simply cease on the Western Wall.
“The scenario proper now — the place we now have solely a wall — isn’t sufficient,” mentioned Tom Nissani, the chief of a small far-right group, Beyadeinu, that advocates constructing a brand new Jewish temple on the coronary heart of the Aqsa compound.
“At some point the temple will likely be again there, on the identical spot,” Mr. Nissani mentioned, after taking part in a small side-protest exterior the Previous Metropolis partitions. “That’s our proper on our land,” he added.
The Israeli police took preventive motion in opposition to some Jewish extremists, barring a handful from getting into the Previous Metropolis, together with Mr. Nissani, who stayed exterior its partitions after his colleagues handed by them.
However to many Palestinians, these felt like token gestures when juxtaposed with the broader context: a nationalist parade by primarily Palestinian neighborhoods that prompted Palestinian shopkeepers to shut, stopped Palestinian residents from freely transferring by components of town, and led some individuals to verbally abuse Arab journalists.
“At the present time pains me,” mentioned Zaki Sabbah, a Palestinian vendor of bread rolls and snacks within the Previous Metropolis. “This can be a metropolis for Jews, Muslims and Christians. So why don’t they shut town on Ramadan or Easter?”
Some Jewish Israelis tried to set a unique tone. A gaggle of leftists, together with some foreigners, briefly blocked a highway from the occupied West Financial institution to Jerusalem, unsuccessfully in search of to cease settler teams from attending the parade. Others distributed flowers to Palestinians within the Muslim quarter of the Previous Metropolis.
Myra Noveck contributed reporting from Jerusalem and Iyad Abuheweila from Gaza Metropolis.
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