Photographs: Ultranationalist Israelis march in Palestinian space of Jerusalem | Israel-Palestine battle Information

1000’s of principally ultranationalist Israelis have taken half in an annual march via a Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem’s Previous Metropolis, with some marchers chanting “Demise to Arabs.”

Jerusalem has been principally calm all through Israel’s conflict on Gaza, however the march might ignite widespread tensions, because it did three years in the past, when it helped set off an 11-day conflict in Gaza.

Marchers gathered exterior the Damascus Gate, sometimes a central gathering place for Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, and chanted anti-Arab and anti-Islamic slogans, danced and waved Israeli flags because the procession kicked off.

Simply earlier than the march started, crowds scuffled with police and threw plastic bottles at a journalist carrying a vest with the phrase PRESS emblazoned on it. Some chanted “Muhammad is lifeless!” referring to the Islamic prophet.

The march was happening as tensions over the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza had been excessive.

The annual march commemorates “Jerusalem Day”, which marks Israel’s seize of East Jerusalem, together with the Previous Metropolis and its holy websites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims, within the 1967 Center East conflict. Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital, however its annexation of East Jerusalem isn’t internationally recognised. The Palestinians, who search East Jerusalem because the capital of a future state, see the march as a provocation.

In earlier years, police have forcibly cleared Palestinians from the parade route, and enormous crowds of principally ultranationalist youths have chanted “Demise to Arabs,” “Might your village burn” and different offensive slogans. The police stated they had been deploying 3,000 safety personnel to make sure calm.

On the insistence of Israel’s far-right Nationwide Safety Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who oversees the police, the march will comply with its conventional route, coming into the Muslim Quarter of the Previous Metropolis via Damascus Gate and ending on the Western Wall, the holiest place the place Jews can pray.

As buses bringing younger Jewish males in for the march thronged across the Previous Metropolis’s centuries-old partitions, Palestinian shopkeepers closed down within the Muslim Quarter in preparation.

The police careworn that the march wouldn’t enter the sprawling Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the third-holiest website in Islam.