Thousands of Israelis marched through Jerusalem on Thursday to celebrate Israel’s conquest of East Jerusalem in 1967, a controversial annual event known as Jerusalem Day regularly creates tension in the city between Jews and Palestinians who see it as a provocation.
Large crowds of Israelis, many of them from ultranationalist groups, marched through the Old City to the Wailing Wall — a remnant of an ancient retaining wall that once surrounded Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount. The parade prompted many Palestinians, who make up the overwhelming majority of Old City residents, to shut down their businesses in anticipation of vandalism and ill-treatment at the hands of the protesters.
“May I be avenged on Palestine” sung A group of about 40 participants just before the parade was supposed to officially start. “May his name be erased.”
“Death to the Arabs,” chanted another similarly sized group as the march began.
Anticipating further unrest, Israel Police said they deployed 3,500 police officers to secure the parade and other side events. The Israeli military was also preparing for possible rocket fire at Palestinian militias in Gaza, which, particularly in the past, had sometimes fired projectiles in response to the march at the start of the 11-day war in 2021 between Israel and Hamas.
Arab news media reported that Palestinians had held a counter-demonstration along the border between the enclave and Israel, where Palestinian rallies often resulted in deadly confrontations with the Israeli military.
For many Israelis, the day is an important and celebratory demonstration of sovereignty in an ancient Jewish capital that was outside of Jewish control for nearly 2,000 years and which they still cannot fully control. For more than a millennium, the Temple Mount has been a Muslim holy site — the site of the Aqsa Mosque — and Jews are technically forbidden to pray there, even if they do The police allowed them to do so informally.
But for most Palestinians, the march — known as the flag parade — is an offensive and unnecessary expression of dominance in what they and most foreign governments consider occupied territory. Israel, meanwhile, captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City, from Jordan The 1967 Arab-Israeli Warand the Palestinians hope that one day it will be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
The anniversary is always exciting, but this year the stakes were raised by the unusually prominent participation of several MPs from what is the most ultranationalist and religious government in Israel’s history.
Several lawmakers from Likud, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s party, joined small groups of Jews touring the Aqsa Mosque grounds to mark the day, angering Muslims. Yitzhak Wasserlauf, a far-right cabinet minister, and Ayala Ben-Gvir, the wife of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, also visited the site.
For some hardliners in Israel, these declarations of sovereignty did not go far enough. Some said the thousands of protesters should continue to parade inside terrain, and not just stop at the Western Wall.
“The current situation – where we only have a wall – is not enough,” said Tom Nissani, the leader of a small far-right group called Beyadeinu, which is campaigning for the construction of a new Jewish temple in the heart of the Aqsa compound.
“One day the temple will be there again, in the same place,” Mr. Nissani said after attending a small side-protest outside the Old City walls. “It is our right to our land,” he added.
The Israeli police took preventive action against some Jewish extremists and barred a few from entering the Old City, including Mr. Nissani, who stayed outside the walls after his colleagues passed through them.
But for many Palestinians, these felt like symbolic gestures when compared to the larger context: a nationalist parade through predominantly Palestinian neighborhoods, causing Palestinian shopkeepers to close, barring Palestinian residents from free movement through parts of the city, and closing some participants Verbal abuse tempted Arab journalists.
“This day pains me,” said Zaki Sabbah, a Palestinian bun and snack vendor in the Old City. “This is a city for Jews, Muslims and Christians. So why don’t they close the city on Ramadan or Easter?”
Some Jewish Israelis tried to set a different tone. A group of leftists briefly blocked a road from the occupied West Bank to Jerusalem, unsuccessfully trying to prevent groups of settlers from taking part in the parade. Others distributed flowers to Palestinians in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.
Hiba Yazbek And Myra Noveck contributed to the reporting.
