East Jerusalem relived on Tuesday the scenes of tension that preceded the biggest war outbreak in the last seven years between Israel and the Gaza militias a month ago. About 5,000 Jewish extremists marched outside the Old City's walled compound chanting nationalist demands, in a parade interpreted as a challenge to the broad-coalition Israeli government formed on Sunday. The deployment of more than 2,000 police officers prevented clashes with hundreds of Palestinian counter-protesters and monitored that the march followed the planned route, diverted from its traditional route through an area with a majority Palestinian population.
Thousands of young people, the vast majority of them ultra-rightist and religious settlers, leapt syncopately under a sea of Israeli flags in front of the emblematic Damascus Gate, although without crossing, as in previous editions of the parade, the main access to the Muslim quarter of the historic center.
They participated in the Jewish nationalist procession for Jerusalem Day, commemorating the conquest of the eastern part of the city by Israeli troops in 1967. The official celebration was suspended on May 10 due to the launch of rockets from Gaza against the province of Gaza. Jerusalem, an action that unleashed 11 days of hostilities between the Israeli Army and the armed arms of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad.
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The Islamists in Gaza then made good on their threat, but have now limited themselves to launching a score of incendiary balloons into cultivated border areas of southern Israel.
Egyptian sources quoted by the Arab press assured that both Hamas and Islamic Jihad had pledged not to trigger an escalation now.
Egypt, which mediated the ceasefire that ended armed clashes in May, has deployed military teams with heavy machinery in the strip to begin reconstruction work in areas damaged by Israeli bombardments.
In the early afternoon, the security forces had loaded with riot control units on horseback to clear the surroundings of the Damascus gate of Palestinian protesters, 17 of whom were arrested and another 27 injured, protesting against the presence of radicals. Jews in East Jerusalem. The Israeli nationalist march continued its course outside the walls towards the Jewish quarter, barely bordering the Muslim quarter, until it concluded in a large concentration in front of the Western Wall esplanade.
"Tension is rising again in Jerusalem at a very politically sensitive time," warned United Nations Middle East envoy Tor Wennesland. The constitution of a new government in Israel after 12 years of consecutive terms of the conservative Benjamin Netanyahu has come as the UN and Egypt are still trying to consolidate the ceasefire that took effect on May 21 in Gaza. Wennesland called on both sides to avoid actions that could be seen as "provocations."
During the past month of Ramadan (between April and May) there were clashes in Jerusalem between policemen and Palestinian protesters at the Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holy place of Islam located in the Old City, and in the nearby Sheikh district Yarrah, faced with the threat of expulsion of dozens of Palestinian families by a settler organization. Israel regards Jerusalem as its unique and indivisible capital, while the Palestinians aspire to turn the eastern part of the Holy City into the capital of their future state.