Getty PicturesCrowds of far-right Israelis chanted insults and assaulted Palestinians throughout an annual parade for Jerusalem Day on Monday.
Chants of “loss of life to Arabs” and nationalistic slogans had been repeated in the course of the occasion, which commemorates Israeli forces taking Palestinian-majority East Jerusalem in the course of the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict.
Violence broke out as ultranationalist Jews streamed into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem’s walled Outdated Metropolis.
Opposition Chief Yair Lapid stated the occasion had turn out to be a pageant of “hatred and racism”, including it was “a shame and an insult to Judaism”.
AFP through Getty PicturesIsraeli police had been deployed as violence broke out within the walled Outdated Metropolis of Occupied East Jerusalem shortly after noon.
1000’s of nationalist Israelis descended to Damascus Gate, one of many principal entrances. Proper-wing activists held banners that learn “67 – Jerusalem in our fingers; 2025 – Gaza in our fingers”.
Arab merchants within the Muslim Quarter who had but to shut their retailers had been harassed by younger Israeli males, witnesses stated.
Chants of “Could your village burn” and “Your private home will probably be ours” had been heard all through the march.
Aggressive marchers had been detained and faraway from the Outdated Metropolis by Israeli police.
Nationwide safety minister Itamar Ben Gvir, of the Jewish Energy celebration, referred to as for the loss of life penalty for “terrorists” in an tackle to the crowds.
Gvir additionally visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest web site in Islam and identified by Jews because the Temple Mount. Jews revere it as the placement of two Biblical Temples and it’s the holiest web site in Judaism.
The compound is run by a Jordanian Islamic belief. Jews are allowed to go to however not pray there.
A spokesman for the Palestinian presidency, based mostly within the West Financial institution, condemned the march and Ben Gvir’s go to to Al-Aqsa.
Israel’s ongoing conflict in Gaza, “repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and provocative acts corresponding to elevating the Israeli flag in occupied Jerusalem threaten the soundness of all the area,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh stated in a press release.
In a cupboard assembly on Monday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to maintain Jerusalem “united, complete, and underneath Israeli sovereignty”.
Getty PicturesLeft-wing opposition chief Yair Golan described photos of violence within the Outdated Metropolis as “stunning”.
“That is what hatred, racism and bullying seem like,” he stated in a press release on X.
“We are going to battle for Jerusalem for all of us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, secular and non secular.
“Jerusalem belongs to all those that love her. We are going to battle for her and restore her as a metropolis for us all.”
Lapid, one other opposition chief, added: “There may be nothing Jewish about this violence. The federal government ministers who stay silent within the face of those occasions are complicit on this shame.”
Yearly hundreds of Israelis march a route by means of Jerusalem and the annexed Outdated Metropolis, ending on the Western Wall, the holiest web site the place Jews are allowed to wish in Jerusalem. On Sunday, a big Israeli flag was unfurled on the Western Wall plaza.
The parade mark Israel’s seize of East Jerusalem within the 1967 conflict and the “unification” of a metropolis that the Israeli authorities says is their everlasting capital.
Palestinians additionally need Jerusalem as their future capital and far of the worldwide group regards East Jerusalem as Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.
This 12 months’s Flag March once more coincided with the conflict in Gaza and escalating Israeli army operations in opposition to Palestinian militants within the West Financial institution.
Israel launched a army marketing campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border assault on 7 October 2023, wherein about 1,200 individuals had been killed and 251 others had been taken hostage. Fifty-seven are nonetheless being held, about 20 of whom are assumed to be alive.
At the very least 53,939 individuals, together with at the very least 16,500 youngsters, have been killed in Gaza since then, in response to the territory’s well being ministry.
