Clashes flared all through the day as left-wing Israeli activists intervened to escort Palestinians away from younger far-right Israeli Jews threatening passersby, witnesses mentioned.
Journalists protecting the rally had been repeatedly harassed and in some situations assaulted, the Reuters witness mentioned.
Earlier, Ben Gvir visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound within the walled Outdated Metropolis, identified to Jews as Temple Mount and to Arabs because the Noble Sanctuary — the third holiest web site in Islam.
Ben Gvir mentioned in a video filmed on the elevated compound that the location was being flooded by Jews. “Right now, thank God, it’s already potential to hope on the Temple Mount,” he mentioned.
Below a decades-old association, the compound is run by a Jordanian Islamic belief. Jews, who regard the compound as the location of two historic temples, are allowed to go to however not pray there.
Ben Gvir, whose go to was condemned by the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, has together with others on the far proper in Israel lengthy pushed for Jewish prayer rights on the web site.
This 12 months’s Flag March once more coincided with the struggle in Gaza, now in its twentieth month, and escalating Israeli army operations towards Palestinian militants within the West Financial institution, the place settler assaults concentrating on Palestinian residents have been on the rise.
The march ceaselessly stokes pressure as ultranationalist Jews stream into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem‘s walled Outdated Metropolis en-route to the Western Wall, one in every of Judaism’s most sacred websites, which abuts the mosque compound.
The 2021 rally led to a short struggle between Israel and Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas. The present struggle in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 assault on southern Israeli communities.
Israel captured East Jerusalem, together with the Outdated Metropolis, from Jordan within the 1967 Center East struggle. Palestinians search East Jerusalem because the capital of a future state that would come with the West Financial institution and Gaza.
Most international locations contemplate East Jerusalem to be occupied territory and don’t acknowledge Israeli sovereignty over it. Israel deems Jerusalem as its everlasting, indivisible capital.
In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. On Sunday, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, congratulated Israel on what he known as the reunification of the town 58 years in the past.
Naomi Hirschler, 39, an Israeli hairdresser from Jerusalem, strolling previous shuttered Palestinian-owned shops within the Outdated Metropolis, mentioned she attends the rally yearly.
“It’s one thing you possibly can’t clarify. You are feeling it. It’s happiness from inside,” she mentioned, including that she was “very completely happy that now we have Jerusalem for us.”
