In March, Israeli nationalists raised racist slogans including “death to billions” and attacked Palestinians and journalists.
In March, Israeli nationalists raised racist slogans including “death to billions” and attacked Palestinians and journalists.
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday defended the decision to hold an annual march that celebrates Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and was marked by violence and anti-Palestinian racism.
Authorities called in thousands of police, forcibly removed Palestinians and risked another war with the Islamist terrorist group Hamas to ensure that thousands of right-wing Israelis could parade through a dense Palestinian neighborhood and hundreds more at a bitterly disputed holy site. be able to visit.
Israel changed course at the last minute in March of last year amid rising tensions over violence at the holy site and efforts to evacuate dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem.
Hamas still fired rockets and the Gaza War broke out for 11 days.
Israel avoided that scenario this year and allowed the parade to take its traditional route through the middle of the Old City’s Muslim quarter.
But in March Israeli nationalists raised racist slogans including “death to billions” and attacked Palestinians and journalists. Fighting broke out along the way, as the police intervened mainly to protect the Jews and to forcibly disperse the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Rescue Service said 62 Palestinians were injured, with 23 requiring hospitalization. Israeli police said they arrested more than 60 suspects and injured five officers. The majority of those arrested appear to be Palestinians, although police declined to provide a breakdown.
Bennett praised police for their handling of the incident and said Israel was obliged to march in the face of threats from Hamas.
“If we hadn’t done it on the regular route, we would – in fact – never go back to it,” he said. “It could have been a return to sovereignty.”
Bennett praised the marchers, saying that “except one extremist group, which we will deal with to the fullest extent of the law, who celebrated yesterday, they did so in a very special, heartwarming way.”
Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel would consider designating two far-right groups, La Familia and Lehwa, as terrorist organisations. The former is a notoriously racist fan club affiliated with one of Israel’s most popular football teams, while the latter is associated with the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who promoted a violent, anti-Arab ideology.
But right-wing views are far more widespread in Israeli society. A strong majority of seats in Israel’s Knesset, or parliament, are held by right-wing parties that support Jewish settlement in the occupied territories and are opposed to the Palestinian state, including one led by a disciple of Kahane. Is.
Right-wing factions are divided over whether former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should return to office, and some, including Bennett’s Yamina, partnered with centrist and left-wing parties last year to form a governing coalition and To avoid more elections.
But nationalist parties in the coalition have gotten their way when the deal is seeking expansion, acceptance of settler checkpoints and preventing Israelis from granting citizenship or even residency to Palestinian spouses.
Bennett himself is opposed to the Palestinian state, but his government has approved some steps to improve the economic situation for Palestinians.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, along with holy sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims in the 1967 war, and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.
Also on Sundays, Israel allowed hundreds of mostly nationalist and religious Jews to visit the holy site, which Jews refer to as the Temple Mount and Muslims know as the al-Aqsa mosque complex. The site, which is the holiest for Jews and the third holiest in Islam, has often been the center of Israeli-Palestinian violence.
The Palestinians fear that Israel is planning to capture the site or divide it. Israel says it has committed to a decades-old set of arrangements known as the status quo, under which Jews can visit the site but not pray there – but that rule has been steadily loosened in recent years. . Some Sunday visitors were seen praying with little police intervention.
“Despite the great efforts of far-right activists, Sunday’s flag march in the Old City of Jerusalem did not lead to a major conflict between Israel and the Palestinians,” Amos Harel wrote in a column in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. “Instead, we saw a general collection of racist demonstrations, violent scuffles between Jews and Arabs, and a general sense of rebellion.”