(Jerusalem) Tens of thousands of Jews gather in Jerusalem on Thursday for the traditional “flag march”, a nationalist demonstration marking the capture of the eastern part of the Holy City by Israel in 1967 and regularly marred by violence.
This year again, the march is taking place in a context of very high tension, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict having already caused nearly 200 deaths since the beginning of the year, including 35 during a five-day war between the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip, from 9 to 13 May.
An incident was recorded at Damascus Gate in the Old City, when march participants attacked journalists with stones and bottles, according to AFP correspondents.
Earlier, AFP journalists had seen young Jews spit on Palestinians and beat one of them before being dispersed by the police.
Some demonstrators chanted “Death to Arabs”.
In Gaza, thousands of people waving Palestinian flags gathered at the border with Israel and the Israeli army fired tear gas at people approaching the fence, according to AFP journalists.
A Palestinian security source in Gaza also said that the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the territory, had fired a “warning rocket” towards the Mediterranean Sea, without giving details.
The “flag march” is one of the demonstrations organized by Israel on the occasion of “Yom Yerushalaim” (“Day of Jerusalem” in Hebrew) to celebrate the “reunification” of the city after the occupation and annexation of its Palestinian side following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
“Provocative Walk”
The UN does not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, which it considers “illegal” under international law.
On Wednesday, Nabil Abou Roudeina, spokesperson for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, warned Israel against its “insistence” in organizing this “provocative” march, proof according to him of “the Israeli government’s assent to the views Jewish extremists.
Hamas had condemned “the campaign of the Zionist occupation against our people in occupied Jerusalem under the pretext of ensuring the security of the march of the flags”.
The Israeli police deployed in force in al-Wad Street, one of the main arteries of the Old City, where the shops had closed.
The participants in the march are “a danger, they knock on the doors of shops and our houses”, declares Abu al-Abed, 72, claiming to have only one idea in mind: “to go home [ lui ] “.
The march, whose traditional route passes through the Old City, in East Jerusalem, must end at the Wailing Wall, a holy place for Jews located below the esplanade of the Mosques, the third holiest site in Islam.
The esplanade is built on what the Jews call the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism.
Defying the prohibition of the rabbinate, according to which the Jews do not have the right to go on the mount of the Temple, some go there nevertheless to visit, in an increasing way these last years. Ultranationalists sometimes take the opportunity to pray there surreptitiously, which the Palestinians denounce as “provocations”.
2500 police
In 2021, on the scheduled day of the march and after weeks of Israeli-Palestinian tension and violence in East Jerusalem, Hamas launched salvoes of rockets into Israel, a prelude to an 11-day war between the two sides.
In 2022, clashes erupted between Palestinians and Israeli security forces, leaving at least 79 injured.
This year, the Israeli police announced that they had deployed 2,500 men in Jerusalem to ensure public order.
Before midday, as usual, several dozen Jews went under police escort to the esplanade of the Mosques after the Muslim morning prayers, according to images broadcast by Israeli television.
For Tom Nissani, 34, an Israeli campaigner for Jewish pilgrim visits to the site, Jerusalem “is our capital, we have to show it, rejoice in it and fight for it”.
“I am delighted to see thousands of people come to celebrate at the Temple Mount and in Jerusalem,” said Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a paragon of the Israeli far right.
In contrast, an Israeli peace group had distributed flowers to Arab merchants in the Old City in the morning to “support” them and protest against the closing of their shops.