By Paula Bernabéu
Jerusalem (EFE).- Thousands of Israeli settlers marched through the Old City of Jerusalem on Monday in the Flag March, an ultra-nationalist parade marking Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian part of the city in 1967.
The settlers ed through the Muslim Quarter and shouted: “Death to the Arabs!” and “The soul of the Jews is pure; the soul of the Arabs is disgusting.”
At around noon, Palestinians in the Muslim Quarter hurriedly gathered and were protected by activists outside their businesses. Just a few hours later, thousands of teenagers in white T-shirts and waving Israeli flags ed before them, banging on the metal doors of their shops and shouting racist slogans.
“If we don’t close, they tell us it’s our responsibility, and then they let them attack us,” lamented the clerk of a flower shop next to the Damascus Gate in the Old City, holding a coffee and not taking his eyes off the Israeli soldiers and police officers stationed around him.
In front of his shop, around 50 boys wearing knitted kippahs and side curls (payos) and the traditional dress of Israeli settlers in the West Bank surround and spit at two Palestinian women, who were being escorted by police as they tried to leave the area before the group became thousands.
These scenes repeated throughout the day: crowds shouting, pushing, spitting, and shoving Palestinians of all ages, as well as Israeli human rights activists and journalists trying to record what was happening.
“You are like Nazis!” shouted an Israeli activist who was recording the harassment of a Palestinian woman while settlers tried to snatch his phone.
Soon after, the police chase him and his companions out of the Old City, claiming that one of them attacked a police officer and that they could not protect them if the settlers started to attack.
“They can’t deal with the little fascists in there, yet they’re telling us to leave!” said to EFE Sigal Hagari, aged 62, one of the activists from the group. The activist intended to spend the day helping Palestinians inside the walls of the Muslim Quarter.
Ultra-nationalist euphoria
By the middle of the afternoon, the crowds had grown from dozens to thousands of people (the Israeli police estimate that there could be over 10,000), waving flags and carrying banners, some bearing the face of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Amidst the chaos of the chants, the dancing, and the drums, a figure protected by the police ed by. Difficult to see because of his short height, only his hand was visible as he shook hands with the teenagers crowded around him, desperate to touch him.
Then, the applause and shouts in unison reveal his identity: “Ben Gvir!,” shout the settler teenagers around Israel’s Minister of National Security, the ultra-nationalist Itamar Ben-Gvir.
The minister, who has a strong anti-Arab discourse, is a role model for settler youth. He is a determined er of the “hilltop youth,” who are residents of illegal West Bank settlements that harass and assault Palestinians in an attempt to force them to leave their territory.
“In 1967, Jerusalem was in our hands. In 2025, Gaza in our hands” reads a poster by the Zionist association Im Tirtzu after the procession.
The highlight of Jerusalem Day is the Flag March, during which Israelis celebrate the occupation of East Jerusalem during the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in its entirety in 1980.
This is the second Flag March since Israel launched its offensive on the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, in retaliation for the Hamas attack that resulted in the death of around 1,200 people in Israeli territory.
According to a tally by the enclave’s health authorities, the military operation on Gaza has since claimed the lives of nearly 54,000 Palestinians. EFE
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