Tens of thousands of Israeli hate marchers and ultranationalists rampaged through the streets of occupied East Jerusalem on Thursday during the so-called “Jerusalem Day” march, chanting “Death to Arabs” and “May your villages burn”, as terrified Palestinian residents barricaded themselves indoors and shuttered their shops in fear of attack.
The annual procession, which marks Israel’s illegal capture and subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem during the 1967 war, saw mobs of mostly young Israelis – many draped in Israeli flags – pour through the narrow alleyways of the Old City, pounding on the metal shutters of Palestinian-owned businesses and confronting anyone who stood in their way.
The annexation of East Jerusalem, whose residents are overwhelmingly Palestinian, has never been recognised by the UN and is considered a violation of international law.
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Despite its official framing by Israeli authorities as a celebration of the “reunification” of the city, the march has, over successive years, mutated into one of the most openly racist public events in the Israeli calendar. Its widely viewed as a ritualised display of supremacy aimed squarely at the Palestinian population it is designed to intimidate.
Jerusalem Day, known in Hebrew as Yom Yerushalayim, was instituted by the Israeli government to commemorate the seizure of East Jerusalem – including the walled Old City, the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound and dozens of Palestinian neighbourhoods – during the June 1967 war. Successive Israeli governments have used the date to entrench the occupation, demolishing Palestinian homes, revoking residency rights and expanding illegal settlements throughout the eastern part of the city.
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The centrepiece of the day is the “Flag March“, in which crowds wind their way through Palestinian neighbourhoods of the Old City before culminating at the Western Wall. The route deliberately passes through the heart of the Muslim Quarter, forcing Palestinian residents either to flee, close their shops or endure hours of harassment under the protection of heavily armed Israeli police.
Palestinian residents and rights groups say the character of the march has grown markedly more violent and openly racist with each passing year, mirroring the rise of the Israeli far right and the empowerment of settler movements within the governing coalition.
Mustafa, a Palestinian resident of the Old City’s Via Dolorosa, told AFP that a group of around 20 settlers forced their way into his family home, smashing glass and screaming “Death to Arabs”. “This is a black day,” he told the news agency. “If you push them, you’ll go to prison… you can’t do anything.”
Another Palestinian shopkeeper, who declined to give his name to AFP for fear of reprisals, said simply: “The situation gets worse every year.”
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According to an AFP correspondent at the scene and footage circulated widely on social media, groups of Israeli youths – many wearing matching T-shirts bearing Jerusalem-themed slogans – hurled plastic chairs at a Palestinian shopkeeper while chanting “Arab sons of whores”.
Others were filmed shoving and surrounding members of Standing Together, an Israeli-Palestinian grassroots movement whose activists had deployed across the Old City in an attempt to shield Palestinian families and businesses from the marauding crowds.
The day’s most provocative moment came when Israel’s far-right National Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir – a convicted racist who has long called for the expulsion of Palestinians – stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam’s third-holiest site, surrounded by armed bodyguards. He raised an Israeli flag at the site, in flagrant violation of the longstanding status quo that governs the sanctuary.
“Fifty-nine years after the liberation of Jerusalem… we have restored sovereignty over the Temple Mount,” Ben Gvir wrote on Telegram, using the Israeli term for the compound.
Israeli police, deployed in their hundreds throughout the Old City, looked on as marchers chanted genocidal slogans, attacked Palestinian property and intimidated residents. As in previous years, authorities pre-emptively ordered Palestinian shopkeepers to close their businesses along the march route, effectively rewarding the very mobs whose violence makes such closures necessary.
