Far-right marchers assault Palestinians as Israel marks taking of Jerusalem

Crowds of far-right Israelis chanted insults and assaulted Palestinians throughout an annual parade for Jerusalem Day on Monday.

Chants of “demise to Arabs” and nationalistic slogans have been repeated through the occasion, which commemorates Israeli forces taking Palestinian-majority East Jerusalem through the 1967 Arab-Israeli warfare.

Violence broke out as ultranationalist Jews streamed into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem’s walled Outdated Metropolis.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 competition of “hatred and racism”, including it was “a shame and an insult to Judaism”.

Israeli police have been deployed as violence broke out within the walled Outdated Metropolis of Occupied East Jerusalem shortly after noon.

Hundreds of nationalist Israelis descended to Damascus Gate, one of many important 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 own home can be ours” have been heard all through the march.

Aggressive marchers have been detained and faraway from the Outdated Metropolis by Israeli police.

Nationwide safety minister Itamar Ben Gvir, of the Jewish Energy social gathering, referred to as for the demise 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 equivalent to elevating the Israeli flag in occupied Jerusalem threaten the soundness of the whole 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, complete, and below Israeli sovereignty”.

Left-wing opposition chief Yair Golan described photographs of violence within the Outdated Metropolis as “surprising”.

“That is what hatred, racism and bullying appear to be,” he stated in an announcement on X.

“We’ll struggle for Jerusalem for all of us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, secular and spiritual.

“Jerusalem belongs to all those that love her. We’ll struggle 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 hundreds of Israelis march a route by Jerusalem and the annexed Outdated Metropolis, ending on the Western Wall, the holiest web site the place Jews are allowed to hope 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 neighborhood 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 in opposition to 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 individuals 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 individuals, together with not less than 16,500 youngsters, have been killed in Gaza since then, in response to the territory’s well being ministry.