Earlier in the month, Israel had carried out airstrikes on Gaza in response to rocket launches. (file)
Jerusalem:
Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a rocket at Israel on Wednesday, the military said, as tensions escalated with police in Jerusalem blocking Jewish ultra-nationalist protesters from arriving in the Old City’s Muslim quarter.
While no one was injured by the Gaza rocket – a piece fell in the yard of a house in the southern Israeli city of Sedrot, police said – it adds to tensions in Israel and the Palestinian territories after nearly a month of deadly violence.
The rocket is the second to be fired from Gaza this week and the first to hit Israel in months.
Hours earlier, Israeli police stopped a crowd of Jewish ultra-nationalist protesters from approaching the Muslim Quarter in the Old City in East Jerusalem to quell Israeli-Palestinian violence after weeks of bloodshed.
Last year, the Islamist Hamas movement – the rulers of Gaza’s Palestinian enclave – launched a barrage of rockets towards Israel when a similar ultra-nationalist march was to begin in the old city, which started the 11-Day War.
More than a thousand ultra-nationalist protesters waving Israeli flags gathered in the early hours of the evening, but police prevented the crowd from reaching the Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Muslim Quarter.
Among the protesters were supporters of right-wing lawmaker Itamar Ben Gwir, a controversial opposition politician. Some in the crowd were raising slogans of “death to billions”.
“We want to go all over Jerusalem and our government is not allowing us,” said Panina, a 62-year-old civil servant.
Ben Gwir himself was barred from the area of the Damascus Gate earlier in the day by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
“I’ll say it frankly, I’m not going to blink, I’m not going to turn,” said Ben Gwir. “I am not allowed to enter the Gate of Damascus. On the basis of what law?”
– ‘Provocation’ –
Tensions are high with the Jewish Passover festival that coincides with the month of the Muslim holy Ramadan.
on Tuesday, Israel launches its first airstrike on the Gaza Strip in monthsIn response to a rocket fired from a Palestinian enclave late Monday after a weekend of violence around a holy site in Jerusalem.
“Some Jews do not surrender to Hamas,” said Ben Gwir.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem”, and called on him to press “to do everything possible to reduce tension, avoid provocative acts and rhetoric”, according to a statement. were in contact with the parties. by his spokesperson in New York.
Bennett had earlier said in a statement that he had stopped Ben Gwir’s rally for security reasons.
“I have no intention of allowing petty politics to endanger human lives,” Bennett said in a statement.
“I will not allow political provocation by Ben Gwir to endanger IDF (Israeli Army) soldiers and Israeli police officers, and make their already heavy work even worse”.
Ben Gwir responded on Twitter, saying that “Bennett, coalition security is not state security”.
Bennett, himself a rightist and a key figure in Israel’s settlement movement, leads an ideologically divided coalition government.
Earlier this month, his coalition lost its one-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament, after a member ran into a dispute over the use of leavened bread products in hospitals during Passover.
Then on Sunday, the Ram Party, drawn from the country’s Arab-Israeli minority, suspended its support for the coalition following violence in and around the al-Aqsa mosque complex, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
About 170 were injured in clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli forces on Friday and Sunday.
Earlier, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs carried out four deadly attacks in the Jewish state in late March and earlier this month, which claimed 14 lives, mostly civilians.
Meanwhile, a total of 23 Palestinians have been killed in violence since March 22, including attackers who targeted Israel, according to an AFP tally.
Right-wing lawmakers are under pressure to leave the Israeli government, which some see as favorable to Palestinians and Israel’s Arab minority.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)