Israeli police shut symbolic Damascus Gate and beat and arrest Palestinians as twice-postponed parade goes ahead, with far-right Israelis chanting ‘Death to Arabs’ and Palestinians calling for ‘day of rage’
Israeli police beat and arrested Palestinians on Tuesday, after closing Damascus Gate to make way for at least a thousand Israelis gathering for the start of a provocative nationalist march through occupied East Jerusalem’s Old City, in the first major test for Israel’s new government.
Set to begin at 5.30pm, the so-called Flag March was rescheduled to Tuesday after being cancelled during a period when repeated Israeli crackdowns in al-Aqsa Mosque and the threatened expulsion of Palestinian families was causing uproar in Jerusalem. That tension led to last month’s 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.
Having closed off certain roads and Damascus Gate, Israeli police arrested Palestinians in Jerusalem ahead of the march. A video posted on Twitter showed Israeli police officers beating a Palestinian on the steps by Damascus Gate.
The Red Crescent said that 27 people were wounded during confrontations with Israeli authorities around the Old City of Jerusalem, including three from rubber-coated steel bullets, one from being beaten and one who had been hit by part of a sound grenade. Two people were hospitalised.
Authorities beat vendors working in shops near Damascus Gate, and pushed them away from the Old City. The whole area around the gate was sealed off by early afternoon on Tuesday, except for members of the press, with several barricades set up to clear the way for the settlers’ march.
AFP reported that more than a thousand Israelis waving national flags gathered at the basin of Damascus Gate at the start of the march, singing anthems of the Jewish state’s settler movement.
Some hoisted far-right lawmaker and Benjamin Netanyahu ally Itamar Ben-Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the far-right Religious Zionism faction, on their shoulders, AFP reported.
Israeli authorities raised the alert level in the country ahead of the march, with additional police and military forces set to be deployed near the besieged Gaza Strip and in towns in Israel with mixed populations of Jewish and Palestinian citizens.
By Tuesday afternoon, a small number of incendiary balloons had been sent from Gaza into Israel, with 20 fires reported along the Gaza border.
Israeli authorities also diverted flights towards the “Northern Route” in and out of Israel, in anticipation of a possible escalation in Gaza.
The march is set to run along the Old City’s wall from Damascus Gate to Jaffa Gate, before heading towards the Western Wall.
Palestinian counter-protesters are also expected in Jerusalem and in towns in Israel with significant numbers of Palestinians, with some Palestinian groups calling for a “day of rage” denouncing the far-right march.
New government’s first test
The Flag March is usually held on the occasion of Jerusalem Day, which marks Israel’s capture and subsequent occupation of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war.
The march typically brings together thousands of young, far-right religious Israelis, who chant anti-Palestinian slogans and wave Israeli flags as they pass through the small streets of East Jerusalem’s Old City.
Initially scheduled for 10 May, the route of the Flag March had been diverted away from the flashpoint of Damascus Gate amid Palestinian protests against the planned forcible removal of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, and Israeli forces’ violent raids at al-Aqsa Mosque.
The march was called off that day, as sirens went off after Hamas fired four rockets from Gaza towards Jerusalem when Israel ignored its ultimatum calling on Israeli forces to withdraw from al-Aqsa.
Over the following 11 days, Israeli forces and Hamas engaged in a war that would leave 248 people in Gaza dead and 13 in Israel.
The procession was later rescheduled for 10 June, but once again postponed after Hamas warned of renewed hostilities should it proceed.
The new date for the march was set on 8 June by the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was voted out by Israel’s parliament on Sunday after 12 years as premier.
Netanyahu has been replaced by his former protege turned rival, the far-right, pro-settlement Jewish nationalist and tech millionaire Naftali Bennett, 49.
The Flag March will be the first test for Bennett’s fragile coalition government, cobbled together by the secular centrist Yair Lapid, a former TV presenter, and including eight parties, ranging from Bennett’s far-right Yamina Party to left-wing Labor and an Islamist party representing Palestinian citizens of Israel.
While Bennett is a prominent member of Israel’s far-right, Netanyahu has labelled the new cabinet as a “dangerous” “left-wing” government and accused it of being “the greatest election fraud in the history” of Israel.
Law Student, School of Law, Quaid-I-Azam University, Islamabad