Thousands of Israeli nationalists, some of them chanting racist slogans, have paraded through Jerusalem’s Old City in an annual celebratory day for Israelis that became one of humiliation for Palestinians living under occupation.
The marchers, mostly male Orthodox teens and young men, were celebrating Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in 1967. The crowd waved blue and white Israeli flags and chanted slogans such as “Death to Arabs” and “We will burn your village”.
Authorities barred Palestinians from going through most of the gates into the Old City.
One group of marchers threw rocks and bottles at members of the press covering the event, wounding three journalists, including a Palestinian reporter for Haaretz, who was struck in the neck, the paper’s website reported.
Police said they had arrested two people and described the attack as an “isolated incident”.
Ibrahim Hamad, 28, a Palestinian freelance journalist who was covering events at Damascus Gate, said the attack was unprovoked. “We were standing here as journalists and there were also some women wearing hijabs near us. Groups of extremist Zionists started throwing glass bottles and sticks,” he said.
“I believe they were trying to stop us from showing what they are doing.”
Palestinian community leader Fakhri Abu Diab was outside al-Aqsa mosque giving a telephone interview with Israel’s Ynet news when four police officers approached him. One grabbed his phone and throw it on the ground, breaking it, he said. He was then forced out of the mosque compound, held at a street corner for an hour and a half, and told not to return to the Old City.
“This is the Israeli police. We are facing apartheid,” he said.
Ynet news editor Nir Cohen criticised the police behaviour. “In the middle of an interview, a policeman arrives and throws his phone away just for the sake of it, with no apparent reason.” A police spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war and considers it part of its “eternal undivided capital”. Palestinians view East Jerusalem as their future capital.
The flag march reflects a far-right ideology embraced by key government ministers, including the anti-Arab extremist minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who joined the marchers.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the event “a splendid day on which to celebrate our return to our eternal capital”.
But Abu Diab called Jerusalem Day “a bad day, the day they occupied us. It’s a catastrophe for us.”
