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 have 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 warfare.
Violence broke out as ultranationalist Jews streamed into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem’s walled Previous Metropolis.
Opposition Chief Yair Lapid stated the occasion had turn into a pageant of “hatred and racism”, including it was “a shame and an insult to Judaism”.
AFP through Getty PicturesIsraeli police have been deployed as violence broke out within the walled Previous 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 arms; 2025 – Gaza in our arms”.
Arab merchants within the Muslim Quarter who had but to shut their retailers have been harassed by younger Israeli males, witnesses stated.
Chants of “Might your village burn” and “Your house will probably be ours” have been heard all through the march.
Aggressive marchers have been detained and faraway from the Previous Metropolis by Israeli police.
Nationwide safety minister Itamar Ben Gvir, of the Jewish Energy occasion, referred to as for the loss of life penalty for “terrorists” in an handle 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 situation 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, primarily based within the West Financial institution, condemned the march and Ben Gvir’s go to to Al-Aqsa.
Israel’s ongoing warfare 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 your complete area,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh stated in an announcement.
In a cupboard assembly on Monday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to maintain Jerusalem “united, entire, and beneath Israeli sovereignty”.
Getty PicturesLeft-wing opposition chief Yair Golan described pictures of violence within the Previous Metropolis as “surprising”.
“That is what hatred, racism and bullying seem like,” he stated in an announcement on X.
“We’ll battle for Jerusalem for all of us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, secular and spiritual.
“Jerusalem belongs to all those that love her. We’ll battle for her and restore her as a metropolis for us all.”
Lapid, one other opposition chief, added: “There’s nothing Jewish about this violence. The federal government ministers who stay silent within the face of those occasions are complicit on this shame.”
Yearly 1000’s of Israelis march a route by Jerusalem and the annexed Previous 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 warfare 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 warfare in Gaza and escalating Israeli navy operations towards Palestinian militants within the West Financial institution.
Israel launched a navy marketing campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border assault on 7 October 2023, during which about 1,200 folks have been killed and 251 others have been taken hostage. Fifty-seven are nonetheless being held, about 20 of whom are assumed to be alive.
Not less than 53,939 folks, together with a minimum of 16,500 kids, have been killed in Gaza since then, in keeping with the territory’s well being ministry.
