Tens of thousands of Jews celebrated “Jerusalem Day” on Thursday in a family atmosphere in the west, but in a much more violent, even violent way in the eastern sector of the Holy City, occupied and annexed by Israel, AFP reported.

Yom Yerushalayim (Hebrew) marks each year, according to the Jewish calendar, the city’s “reunification” following Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

The UN does not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem. And every year, the day becomes a source of tension as Israeli jubilation collides with Palestinian sentiment as a painful reminder of the loss of the city they hope to one day make the capital of the state they aspire to.

“Since the time of King David, Jerusalem has been the capital of the nation of Israel and only his,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the evening.

In addition to the dozens of events organized in the west, the “flag march,” a nationalist demonstration that passes through the Old City in the east, crystallizes the tension.

This is especially true this year, when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has already claimed nearly 200 lives since January 1, including 35 in the five-day war between the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip from May 9 to 13.

Clad in large numbers in white T-shirts and carrying Israeli flags, tens of thousands of demonstrators, mostly young people, entered the Old City through the Damascus Gate in the north and marched to the Western Wall in the south, where 50,000 people attended evening Jewish prayers, the authority said. that administers the site.

“Death to the Arabs”

Among them were two far-right figures in the government, Homeland Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and his finance counterpart Bezalel Smortrich, numerous settlers from the religious Zionist movement, and members of the racist Jewish organization Lehava.

Protesters chanted “Death to the Arabs!” among other racist slogans, AFP journalists reported, some of whom were attacked with stones and bottles near the Damascus Gate.

A spokesman for the Jerusalem police said that an adult and a minor were arrested in connection with the attack.

Earlier, AFP correspondents saw young Jews spitting at Palestinians and throwing objects at one of them before being dispersed by police.

But overall the day was calmer than last year, when at least 79 people were injured in clashes between Palestinians and Israeli police.

In 2021, after weeks of tension, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which is in power in the Gaza Strip, fired rockets into Israel on the day of the “March of the Flags”, a prelude to an 11-day war between the two camps.

In the Gaza Strip, several thousand people waving Palestinian flags gathered at the border with Israel, AFP journalists reported.