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

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

Chants of “death to Arabs” and nationalistic slogans were repeated during the event, which commemorates Israeli forces taking Palestinian-majority East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Violence broke out as ultranationalist Jews streamed into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem’s walled Old City.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid said the event had become a festival of “hatred and racism”, adding it was “a disgrace and an insult to Judaism”.

Israeli police were deployed as violence broke out in the walled Old City of Occupied East Jerusalem shortly after midday.

Thousands of nationalist Israelis descended to Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances. Right-wing activists held banners that read “67 – Jerusalem in our hands; 2025 – Gaza in our hands”.

Arab traders in the Muslim Quarter who had yet to close their shops were harassed by young Israeli men, witnesses said.

Chants of “May your village burn” and “Your home will be ours” were heard throughout the march.

Aggressive marchers were detained and removed from the Old City by Israeli police.

National security minister Itamar Ben Gvir, of the Jewish Power party, called for the death penalty for “terrorists” in an address to the crowds.

Gvir also visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam and known by Jews as the Temple Mount. Jews revere it as the location of two Biblical Temples and it is the holiest site in Judaism.

The compound is administered by a Jordanian Islamic trust. Jews are allowed to visit but not pray there.

A spokesman for the Palestinian presidency, based in the West Bank, condemned the march and Ben Gvir’s visit to Al-Aqsa.

Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, “repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and provocative acts such as raising the Israeli flag in occupied Jerusalem threaten the stability of the entire region,” Nabil Abu Rudeineh said in a statement.

In a cabinet meeting on Monday morning, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to keep Jerusalem “united, whole, and under Israeli sovereignty”.

Left-wing opposition leader Yair Golan described images of violence in the Old City as “shocking”.

“This is what hatred, racism and bullying look like,” he said in a statement on X.

“We will fight for Jerusalem for all of us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, secular and religious.

“Jerusalem belongs to all those who love her. We will fight for her and restore her as a city for us all.”

Lapid, another opposition leader, added: “There is nothing Jewish about this violence. The government ministers who remain silent in the face of these events are complicit in this disgrace.”

Every year thousands of Israelis march a route through Jerusalem and the annexed Old City, ending at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray in Jerusalem. On Sunday, a large Israeli flag was unfurled at the Western Wall plaza.

The parade mark Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and the “unification” of a city that the Israeli government says is their eternal capital.

Palestinians also want Jerusalem as their future capital and much of the international community regards East Jerusalem as Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory.

This year’s Flag March again coincided with the war in Gaza and escalating Israeli military operations against Palestinian militants in the West Bank.

Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Fifty-seven are still being held, about 20 of whom are assumed to be alive.

At least 53,939 people, including at least 16,500 children, have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s health ministry.