Tense march tests Israel’s new govt
JERUSALEM: Hundreds of Israeli ultranationalists, some chanting “Death to Arabs”, paraded through east Jerusalem on Tuesday in a show of force that threatened to spark renewed violence just weeks after a war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinians in Gaza responded by launching incendiary balloons that set at least 10 fires in southern Israel.
The march posed a test for Israel’s fragile new government as well as the tenuous truce that ended last month’s 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.
Palestinians consider the march, meant to celebrate Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in 1967, to be a provocation. Hamas called on Palestinians to “resist” the parade, a version of which helped ignite last month’s 11-day Gaza war.
With music blaring, hundreds of Jewish nationalists gathered and moved in front of Damascus Gate. At one point, several dozen youths, jumping and waving their hands in their air, chanted: “Death to Arabs!” In another anti-Arab chant, they yelled, “May your village burn.”