Israeli PM defends march marked by violence, anti-arab racism

Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett on Monday defended the decision to hold an annual march that celebrates Israel’s takeover of east Jerusalem and was marked by violence and anti-arab racism.

Authorities called up thousands of police, forcibly cleared out Palestinians and risked another war with the Hamas group to ensure that tens of thousands of right-wing Israelis could parade through a dense Palestinian neighbourhood and hundreds could visit an intensely contested Muslim holy site.

Israel had changed the route at the last minute in 2021, at a time of soaring tensions over violence at the holy site and attempts by settlers to remove dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in east Jerusalem. Hamas still fired rockets, and an 11-day Gaza war ensued.

Israel avoided that scenario this year and allowed the parade to take its traditional route through the heart of the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.

But the march saw Israeli nationalists chant racist slogans and attack Palestinians and journalists. Fights broke out along the route, as police mainly intervened to protect Jews and disperse Palestinians.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said 62 Palestinians were wounded, including 23 who needed hospitalisation. Israeli police said they arrested over 60 suspects and that five officers were wounded. The vast majority of those arrested appear to have been Palestinians, though police refused to provide a breakdown.

Bennett praised the police’s handling of the event and said Israel was obliged to hold the march in the face of threats by Hamas. “If we hadn’t done it along the regular route, we would — in effect — never go back to it,” he said. “This could have been a retreat on sovereignty.” Bennett praised the marchers, saying that “except for an extremist group, whom we will deal with to the fullest extent of the law, those who celebrated yesterday did so in a very special, heart-lifting way”.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, including the Old City with its Muslim holy sites, in the 1967 war, and annexed it in a move not recognised internationally. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.

Also on Sunday, Israel allowed hundreds of nationalist and religious Jews to visit the holy site know as the Al Aqsa mosque compound.

The Palestinians fear Israel plans to take over the site or partition it. Israel says it is 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 steadily eroded in recent years. Some of Sunday’s visitors were seen praying with little interference from police.

“Despite great efforts by farright activists, Sunday’s Flag March in the Old City of Jerusalem didn’t lead to a major conflagration between Israel and the Palestinians,” Amos Harel wrote in a column in Israel’s HAARETZ newspaper. “Instead, we witnessed the usual collection of racist displays, violent scuffles between Jews and Arabs and a general sense of revulsion.” — ap