Tens of thousands of Israelis, many belonging to nationalist groups, took part in the annual Jerusalem Day flag march to mark the capture of the city’s east in the 1967 war.
Crowds waving Israeli flags and shouting anti-Arab slogans gathered outside the Old City’s Damascus Gate before marching toward the Western Wall through the Muslim Quarter – an act seen by Palestinians as a provocation.
Palestinian stores along the procession route closed their doors, amid a heavy Israeli police presence, with 3,000 officers deployed.
Police later said 18 people had been arrested, including five for attacking journalists.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz – whose journalist Nir Hasson was among those attacked – reported that hundreds of young men rampaged through the Muslim Quarter before the event began, chanting “Death to Arabs” and attacking Palestinians and others..
Flag marches are always tense, but fears of violence were greater this year due to the war in Gaza.
Far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir participated in the march and said at the start that it was sending a message to Hamas that “Jerusalem is ours.”
“With God’s help, total victory is ours,” he added.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a special meeting in honor of Jerusalem Day that Israel was “surrounded by enemies” like it was 57 years ago.
“They thought they would strangle us, wipe us off the map. But we are an ancient people, a people of courageous fighters. We stood up as one man and defended ourselves,” he said. “We are also doing it today against Hamas in the south, Hezbollah in the north and Iran in the east.”
Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh condemned what he called the “settler rampage” in Jerusalem.
“Our people will not rest until the occupation ends,” he promised.
Jerusalem, with its major Muslim, Jewish and Christian holy sites, is at the heart of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel – which occupied the city’s formerly Jordanian-held east in 1967 and effectively annexed it in 1980 in a move not recognized by most countries – considers all of Jerusalem its capital.
Palestinian leaders want East Jerusalem – home to around 350,000 Palestinians and 230,000 Israeli settlers – to be the capital of a future independent Palestinian state.
On the day of the 2021 Israeli flag march, Hamas fired rockets into Jerusalem, sparking a war in Gaza that lasted 11 days.
The current war began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage.
Since then, at least 36,580 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
