Israeli security forces prepared for the possibility of clashes at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on Sunday ahead of the controversial flag march for Jerusalem Day.
Channel 12 reported on Saturday, without citing sources, that security officials fear Palestinian rioters have barricaded themselves inside the al-Aqsa Mosque on Temple Mount, throwing stones and other objects at officials and Jewish worshipers. , because they go to campus on Sunday mornings.
Security forces were preparing for possible violence in the West Bank, possible rocket fire from Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip, and even an attack by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah on the northern border with Lebanon.
As it stands, police will allow controversial far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben Gwir to visit Temple Mount on Sunday. Police believe that while Ben Gwir’s visit could cause significant escalation, any resulting conflict can be contained and controlled, Haaretz reported Friday.
Later Sunday, there will be a Jerusalem Day flag march in and around the old city. The marchers are set to walk along Jaffa Street to the Damascus Gate, where access will be blocked for Palestinians. They would continue through Hagai Street in the Muslim Quarter into the old town and end at the Western Wall.
This is the traditional route of the annual march, which Palestinians consider to be provocation.
MK Itamar Ben Gwir attends a march by right-wing activists through Jerusalem’s Old City on April 20, 2022. (Yontan Sindel / Flash 90)
Jerusalem Day, which marks Israel’s victory over the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, is celebrated by nationally-religious Jews, most prominently by youths who wear the Israeli flag. Let’s march in the capital while dancing together.
Israeli officials rescheduled March 2021, an hour before it was held up after threats from Hamas and weeks of high tension. Police surrounded the old city in an attempt to prevent the Israeli march from reaching the Damascus Gate.
Organizers then announced the cancellation of the event but hundreds of participants took part in the Old City. Soon after, Hamas launched a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem, ending the 11-day Gaza War.
Senior military officials from the Gaza Division of the Israeli Defense Forces told leaders of communities along the border with the Strip that they did not expect an increase like last year, Channel 13 News reported on the eve of the celebrations.
View of the barrier at the Israel-Gaza border on December 8, 2021. (Flash90)
However, Palestinian terrorist groups including Hamasi warning An “explosion” took place before the controversial flag march on Saturday.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh Told Earlier this week that “the Palestinian people, led by resistance – especially in the West Bank and Jerusalem – will not allow this Jewish, Talmudic nonsense to go unanswered.”
According to Channel 12 Saturday, Hamas was currently at odds with terrorist groups in the Strip over its response to the march in Jerusalem, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others in favor of rocket attacks on Israel.
Meanwhile, prominent Israeli political and religious figures have tried to emphasize that the flag march and its route into the Muslim Quarter were not new and that the fragile status quo at Temple Mount would not change.
Interior Minister Aylette Sheik considered Saturday an “attempt to blur the nationalist meaning of the day” with religion and extremism.
Calling upon the parents to celebrate the day with their children, he said, “It is not a communal day but a national day.”
Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lyon said in a video on Ynet that the march has been taking place for many years. He added that only those who participated in the march “will do so without hurting people of other faiths.”
Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, head of the Markaz Harv Yeshiva in Jerusalem, explained in the video that the march was founded by the late Rabbi Yehuda Hazani in his yeshiva. “Their intention was to express the relation between the new city, between the old city, between Jerusalem which had been destroyed [re]built Jerusalem.”
Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, a Ramat Gan-based rabbi and prominent religious Zionist theorist, said the march of the flags is meant to bring “joy and honor”, and called on those not to participate with the intention of harming others.
In a video posted in Arabic, Major General Ghassan Aliyan, Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) urged Palestinians not to believe the misinformation campaign, explaining that this march took place over 30 years. was, and “wasn’t new.”
Meanwhile, Health Minister Nitzen Horowitz told Channel 12 on Saturday that marching through the unstable Damascus Gate was a “mistake”, criticizing Public Safety Minister Omar Barlev’s decision to allow it to proceed.
“This plan is a problem. It is possible to take it a different route, nothing will happen,” and added that “it is useless to waste this provocation at such a sensitive time,” he said.
