Israeli police on Wednesday blocked hundreds of far-right Jewish protesters from marching toward Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Old City’s Muslim quarter, amid rising tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. The organizers said the march was an attempt to “bring back the feeling of safety to the streets of Jerusalem”. Israeli leaders called the march a “provocation”.
Confrontations in Jerusalem’s Old City pose the risk of a relapse into a broader conflict like last year’s 11-day Israel-Gaza war, which killed more than 250 Palestinians in Gaza and 13 people in Israel.
The Old City lies in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of a future state. Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem in a move that has not won international recognition after capturing the area in a 1967 war, regards all of Jerusalem as its eternal capital.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews at the Temple Mount, has been at the center of much of the violence in recent days. The hilltop shrine is the third holiest site in Islam. For Jews, it is their holiest site, where two temples stood in antiquity.