Israeli nationalists chant ‘Death to Arabs’ amid racist slogans during Jerusalem Day march through the Old City.
JERUSALEM: Israeli nationalists swept through the narrow streets of Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “May your villages burn” during the annual Jerusalem Day march, while many Palestinian residents remained barricaded indoors.
Every year, tens of thousands of Israelis — many of them teenagers and young adults — parade through Jerusalem to celebrate what Israeli authorities call the “reunification” of Jerusalem following Israel’s capture and annexation of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
The annexation of east Jerusalem, home to a predominantly Palestinian population, is not recognised by the United Nations.
Over the years, the annual march has repeatedly descended into violence, with groups of young ultranationalists targeting Palestinians with racist chants, intimidation and assaults.
This year’s march comes against the backdrop of the Iran war and a ceasefire in Gaza, which sees near-daily violations.
Mustafa, a Palestinian resident of the Old City’s Via Dolorosa, said young ultranationalist Israelis had broken into the courtyard of his home, breaking glass and chanting “Death to Arabs”.
“This is a black day… I was inside the home, when around 20 settlers came inside, they broke the doors,” he told AFP.
“If you push them, you’ll go to prison… you can’t do anything.”
‘Gets worse every year’
Thousands marched along the main roads outside the Old City, among them teenagers draped in Israeli flags and parents carrying babies in their arms.
“It’s an extraordinary atmosphere,” said Isabelle, 59, who drove two-and-a-half hours to watch the sea of blue and white flags.
Reuven, 37, who attended with his young son, said: “Christians and Muslims can stay here, but this city, one united city, belongs to the Jews.”
Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, marked the occasion by visiting the highly sensitive Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third-holiest site.
Known to Jews as the Temple Mount, it is also Judaism’s holiest place.
“Fifty-nine years after the liberation of Jerusalem, I raised the Israeli flag on the Temple Mount, and we can say with pride: we have restored sovereignty over the Temple Mount,” Ben Gvir said on Telegram.
An AFP correspondent saw Ben Gvir, flanked by bodyguards, marching with the crowds and posing for photos.
Most Palestinian shopkeepers in the Old City had pulled down their metal shutters and deserted the stone alleyways.
A handful of shops remained open under the protection of activists from the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots movement Standing Together, who deployed across the Old City in an effort to shield Palestinian residents and businesses from harassment and attacks.
Videos on social media showed activists being shoved and surrounded by youths wearing matching T-shirts emblazoned with Jerusalem-themed slogans.
In one video, the youths hurled plastic chairs at a Palestinian shopkeeper while chanting “Arab sons of whores”.
The shopkeeper appeared to throw one chair back before raising a stick in warning.
“The situation gets worse every year,” one Palestinian shopkeeper told AFP, refusing to give his name for fear of reprisals.
Show of solidarity
Crowds chanted “Death to Arabs” and “May your villages burn” under the watch of Israeli police deployed throughout the area, according to an AFP correspondent and online footage.
Some people clapped rhythmically, while others pounded on the metal shutters of closed Palestinian shops.
Authorities sometimes order Palestinian shops in the Old City to shut for the march, which ends at the Western Wall — the last remnant of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, the holiest site where Jews are allowed to pray.
The crowds included some members of a hardline settler movement called Hilltop Youths, linked to near-daily attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
“They have no place here,” said one of them, declining to give his name.
Marchers also confronted journalists, shoving them and blocking them from filming.
Earlier in the day, dozens of Israeli peace activists handed flowers to passersby.
“It was important for me to come in order to show some solidarity with the local community and say that as a Jew, as a Zionist, as someone who wants a Jewish state here, I want them to be part of it and be part of the nation with equal rights,” said Ilan Perez, 52, a tech worker from Raanana, near Tel Aviv.
