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Uri Weltmann was difficult. He is the national leader of Standing Together, an organization of Jewish-Palestinian peace activists, who have come together to oppose the thousands of Jewish marchers marching in the Old City of East Jerusalem.
He had reason to worry. The ‘Jerusalem Day’, known by the Jewish community every year to celebrate the 1967 occupation and illegal occupation of the city, has become an opportunity for thousands of people to board buses from all over Israel and the West Bank to take part in the ‘Flag March’, where they destroy the old city and attack Palestinians – and Jewish peace activists. Palestinians from outside the Old City were not allowed by the police.
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This year’s event on Thursday took place before clashes broke out, where ultranationalist Israelis – many of them young – attacked Palestinians in the Christian Quarter. Israelis destroyed property, and Israeli police forced Palestinian shop owners to close.
Many other Palestinian businesses had already closed for the day, fearing harassment and persecution.
“It has gotten worse since October 7,” Weltmann said, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of Israel in 2023, which led to Israel’s civil war in Gaza.
Weltmann and about 200 other activists from Standing Together, dressed in purple, tried to stand between right-wing Jewish and Palestinian marchers, but were often beaten.
As in previous years, the marchers shouted anti-Palestinian slogans, including ‘Burn your city’ and ‘Death to the Arabs’. He was also filmed spitting and swearing at Palestinians.
Police have so far arrested 13 people, including Jews and Palestinians.
Ultranationalists are fully supported by the Israeli government. Earlier in the day, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir led a large group of Israeli Jews to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where they displayed the Israeli flag in front of the Dome of the Rock.
Jordan condemned Ben-Gvir’s defiance, with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs calling it “a flagrant violation of international law, an unacceptable provocation, and a violation of history and existing laws”.
Jordan runs the Jerusalem Waqf department, which he oversees the holy place in the captured East Jerusalem, according to the old covenant. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of any future Palestinian state.
Violent people
Last year, crowds of right-wing and Orthodox marchers flooded the city, attacking Palestinians and chanting racist slogans. Israel’s Haaretz newspaper described the event as a government-sanctioned invitation to dissident groups to enter the Muslim Quarter, smashing shop signs, breaking locks, banging iron doors and pillars and plastering racist stickers in many parts of the Old City.
Weltmann said the violence and anti-Palestinian protests known as “Jerusalem Day” have been on the rise with the growth of the far-right ultranationalist movement in Israel pre-2023.
Exacerbating much of the violence, Weltmann said, was the police under the supervision of Ben-Gvir, whose police role in the incident often conflicted with active participation.
Religious Zionism, which has approached much of Israel’s right wing, has been on the rise since the time of Israel. withdrawn from Gaza in 2005when many in the Israeli settlement area began to think that the areas occupied in 1967 – Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights – could be in danger, experts told Al Jazeera.
They explain how the Zionist religion has been established and used by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his popular Likud party to exercise power and, after the October 7 attack, launch his murderous war in Gaza, killing more than 72,000 Palestinians.
Under the watch of Netanyahu and his right-wing finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, the amount of illegal settlements in the West Bank where it used to go up. The self-styledHilltop Youth‘, a disaffected group of radical and violent youth, is also growing in appearance and invisibility, while the violence of those who have replaced it – which has long characterized the Israeli presence in the occupied West Bank. it has exploded.
A researcher on Jewish-Arab relations, Eram Tzidkiyahu, said: “It is not enough for us to celebrate our victory, but to celebrate our victory in the dining rooms of the losers.” Celebrating alone doesn’t have the same baggage. deliberately within the Muslim Quarter (of the Old City).
“This violence comes from this, which is fueled by young men who want to argue and unite in their rejection of the ‘other’,” he said. “This didn’t start on October 7. It’s very entrenched.”
Useless cops
Israeli police often do little to stop Palestinian attacks on the Flag March, and few Israeli Jews have been punished for the many crimes they have committed.
“The so-called Flag March … has always been violent,” said Ofer Cassif of the leftist Hadash party, adding that it had become more violent in the past few years, especially since October 7.
Cassif criticized Netanyahu’s “fascist” government for encouraging violence.
The Israeli police, which Cassif calls the “secret army” of Ben-Gvir, did not stop the “violence, violence, destruction of shops, violence and attacks on Palestinians in the Old City, and in the whole city”.
However, while it was easy for Israelis to see the presence of Ben-Gvir, or the violence of the Flag March itself as exceptional, doing so was missing the point, observers said, especially given the wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.
“It’s easy to say that Ben-Gvir is a myth,” said Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the rights group Ir Amim. “Many liberals in Israel do this to feel good about themselves.” It’s easy. They don’t want to recognize that this is part of the Israeli people and, as long as they don’t feel confident enough to say in public that, yes, the Palestinians have rights, they have them too.
“Ben-Gvir is not funny. He is Israel: 2026,” Tatarsky continued. “He is part of a government and a group that, despite the war with Iran and Lebanon, still prioritizes the removal of Palestinians from wherever they may be.”
