A large rally in Jerusalem marking Israel’s capture of the city’s east in the 1967 war descended into chaos on Monday as far-right Israeli Jews confronted and assaulted Palestinians, fellow Israelis and journalists, witnesses said.
The annual “Flag March” drew tens of thousands of people, chanting, dancing and waving Israeli flags after far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, a longtime flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
Violence broke out in the walled Old City of East Jerusalem shortly after midday, a Reuters witness said, when young marchers began harassing the few Palestinian shopkeepers who had yet to shutter their stores ahead of the rally.
The marchers, mostly young Israelis who live in settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, then began to target Israeli left-wing activists and journalists observing the rally.
The demonstrators shouted nationalistic slogans and called for violence against Palestinians, chanting: “Death to Arabs.”
A Palestinian woman and journalists were spat on by a group of young settlers, and nearby Israeli police did not intervene, the Reuters witness said.
Police officials did not respond to a request for comment. No arrests were reported as of late afternoon.
A police officer at the scene said young Israeli marchers could not be arrested because they were under the age of 18.
Moshe, a 35-year-old Israeli settler from the West Bank and supporter of the current right-wing government, walked through a Palestinian neighborhood of the Old City with a rifle slung over his shoulder and his daughter on his shoulders. It was a “very happy day” because all of Jerusalem was “under the government of Israel,” he said, declining to give his last name.
Left-wing opposition leader Yair Golan, a former armed forces deputy commander, called images of violence in the Old City “shocking”. He said in a statement: “This is not what loving Jerusalem looks like. This is what hatred, racism and bullying look like.”
“We will keep Jerusalem united, whole, and under Israeli sovereignty,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting held in East Jerusalem earlier on Monday.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian presidency based in the West Bank condemned the march and Ben Gvir’s visit to Al-Aqsa.
Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, “repeated incursions into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and provocative acts such as raising the Israeli flag in occupied Jerusalem threaten the stability of the entire region,” the spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said in a statement.
Clashes flared throughout the day as left-wing Israeli activists intervened to escort Palestinians away from young far-right Israeli Jews threatening passersby, witnesses said.
Journalists covering the rally were repeatedly harassed and in some instances assaulted, the Reuters witness said.
Earlier, Ben Gvir visited the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the walled Old City, known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Arabs as the Noble Sanctuary — the third holiest site in Islam.
Ben Gvir said in a video filmed at the elevated compound that the site was being flooded by Jews. “Today, thank God, it is already possible to pray on the Temple Mount,” he said.
Under a decades-old arrangement, the compound is administered by a Jordanian Islamic trust. Jews, who regard the compound as the site of two ancient temples, are allowed to visit but not pray there.
Ben Gvir, whose visit was condemned by the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, has along with others on the far right in Israel long pushed for Jewish prayer rights at the site.
This year’s Flag March again coincided with the war in Gaza, now in its 20th month, and escalating Israeli military operations against Palestinian militants in the West Bank, where settler attacks targeting Palestinian residents have been on the rise.
The march frequently stokes tension as ultranationalist Jews stream into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem’s walled Old City en-route to the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s most sacred sites, which abuts the mosque compound.
The 2021 rally led to a brief war between Israel and Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas. The current war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israeli communities.
Israel captured East Jerusalem, including the Old City, from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state that would include the West Bank and Gaza.
Most countries consider East Jerusalem to be occupied territory and do not recognize Israeli sovereignty over it. Israel deems Jerusalem as its eternal, indivisible capital.
In 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump recognized all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. On Sunday, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, congratulated Israel on what he called the reunification of the city 58 years ago.
Naomi Hirschler, 39, an Israeli hairdresser from Jerusalem, walking past shuttered Palestinian-owned stores in the Old City, said she attends the rally every year.
“It’s something you can’t explain. You feel it. It’s happiness from inside,” she said, adding that she was “very happy that we have Jerusalem for us.”
