Tensions high as Israel nationalists march into east Jerusalem

Following the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel annexed east Jerusalem and its Old City in a move never recognised by the international community.

Thursday’s rally took place days into a ceasefire that ended deadly cross-border fighting with Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza.

Thirty-three people, including multiple civilians, were killed in the blockaded Palestinian enclave and two in Israel, a citizen and a Gazan labourer.

Some 2,500 police officers secured the march, which began in the western part of the city before passing into east Jerusalem and through the Old City to the Western Wall, where it wrapped up.

Before the march began, Palestinians with shops in the Old City closed up for the day.

Resident Abu al-Abed, 72, said he wanted “to go home”. The marchers “are harmful, they’re walking and start to hit the doors of the shops and the doors of our houses,” he told AFP.

Scuffles between Jewish and Palestinian youths took place as early marchers arrived in the Old City, with police saying that in some cases forces “were required to act to prevent friction and provocations”.

But the violence was greatly reduced from last year, when at least 79 people were wounded as police clashed with Palestinian counter-protesters outside Damascus Gate.

Officials who manage the holy site estimated that 50,000 people took part in Jewish prayers at the Western Wall in the evening.

Prior to the march, dozens of Jews – including at least three lawmakers from Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and a minister from Mr Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power faction – visited Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, Islam’s third holiest site.

‘Acquiescence’ to extremists

Jews, who call it the Temple Mount and revere it as their religion’s holiest site, are allowed to visit but not pray.

One of them, Mr Tom Nissani, was sitting at Jaffa Gate with an Israeli flag, awaiting the march.

“It’s our capital city, we have to show it, to enjoy it, to fight for it”, the 34-year-old West Bank settler who works for an organisation promoting Jewish presence on the flashpoint site told AFP.

Transport Minister Miri Regev, from Netanyahu’s Likud, was among Israelis waving flags at Damascus Gate hours before the official rally.