Israeli participants in a nationalist march through a Palestinian area of Jerusalem chanted “Death to Arabs“ on Wednesday, stoking already surging tensions as the war in Gaza rages.
Thousands of Israelis, including many ultranationalists, were taking part in the “Jerusalem Day” march.
The annual event marks Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem, including the Old City and its holy sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, in the 1967 Middle East war.
The marchers also chanted anti-Islamic slogans outside the Damascus Gate, a central gathering place for Palestinians in east Jerusalem.
The march in the past has helped fuel violence, including helping to set off an 11-day war with Hamas three years ago.
Palestinians view the annual march as provocative.
Just before the march began, crowds scuffled with police and threw plastic bottles at a journalist wearing a Press vest .
The march was taking place as tensions over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza are high.
The war began with Hamas’ October 7 attack in southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted about 250 hostages.
Israel responded with a massive offensive that has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, displaced most of the territory’s population and caused widespread destruction.
The United States has thrown its weight behind a phased ceasefire and hostage release outlined by President Joe Biden last week.
But Israel says it will not end the war without destroying Hamas, while the militant group is demanding a lasting ceasefire and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces.
Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital, but its annexation of east Jerusalem is not internationally recognised. The Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.
In past years, police have forcibly cleared Palestinians from the parade route, and large crowds of mostly ultranationalist youths have chanted offensive slogans. The police say they are deploying 3,000 security personnel to ensure calm.
At the insistence of Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, the march will follow its traditional route, entering the Muslim quarter of the Old City through Damascus Gate and ending at the Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray.
As buses taking young Jewish men in for the march thronged around the Old City’s centuries-old walls, Palestinian shopkeepers closed down in the Muslim quarter in preparation.
The police said the march would not enter the sprawling Al-Aqsa mosque compound, the third holiest site in Islam.
The hilltop on which it stands is the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the Jewish temples in antiquity.
Perceived encroachments on the site have set off widespread violence on a number of occasions going back decades.
Counterprotests were planned throughout the day. An Israeli group, Tag Meir, sent volunteers through the emptying city streets ahead of the march to distribute flowers to Christian and Muslim residents of the Old City.
