Jerusalem braces for nationalist Flag March amid tensions over Gaza war
Organizers expect tens of thousands to attend contentious parade through flashpoint areas of the Old City, as Ben Gvir calls on revelers to visit Temple Mount
Security forces in capital were readying for potential friction on Wednesday afternoon, when the Jerusalem Day Flag March was slated to take place amid already heightened tensions over the ongoing war in Gaza.
The parade will follow its usual route, with tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis waving blue-and-white flags marching through Damascus Gate and the Old City’s Muslim Quarter to the Western Wall.
Critics of the march, which celebrates the reunification of East and West Jerusalem in 1967’s Six Day War, argue that parading through predominantly Arab areas of the Old City antagonizes the city’s Palestinian population, and often leads to violence against its residents by right-wing Jewish youth.
The march has seen violent scuffles in years past, with participants ignoring law enforcement’s pleas for calm, and brawling with Palestinian residents of the Old City. Although Jerusalem has remained relatively peaceful since the Hamas-led October 7 attack that sparked the war, many onlookers worry that the march will upset the city’s delicate balance.
Police said that more than 3,000 officers — including border police, volunteers and backup from other cities — will be deployed in and around the Old City on Wednesday afternoon.
Officials have often faced calls both within and outside Israel to alter the route to avoid passing through the Muslim Quarter and inflaming tensions.
After reported pressure from National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, police confirmed on Monday that they will be keeping the usual routes from downtown Jerusalem to the Western Wall. There will be two paths participants can take to the wall, one that passes through Dung Gate, and a second that passes through Damascus Gate and the Muslim Quarter.
Police stressed that the march will not pass through the Temple Mount site, a flashpoint for violence in the Old City, while Ben Gvir — who regularly attends the march — called on participants to tour the holy site during the limited visiting hours for non-Muslims.
“We need to hit them in the most important place for them,” Ben Gvir told Army Radio on Tuesday morning. “We need to come and say the Temple Mount is ours and Jerusalem is ours. If we see ourselves as the sovereign of the area, our enemies will respect us.”
Laura Wharton, a member of the Jerusalem city council representing the left-wing Meretz party, told The Times of Israel that she was ashamed the municipality has anything to do with the march, and called it a drain on the city’s resources.
“I’m horrified that while we’re at war, trying to defend our borders, we’re backing such a provocative event,” she said.
Wharton was not alone in her sentiment, with more liberal elements in Jerusalem calling for a serious change in the way the city conducts the march, or to expunge it completely from Israeli tradition.
“Marching through the Muslim Quarter of all places is just a provocation, it’s the last thing we need now, the last thing that any real patriot would want to do now,” said Wharton.
Shai Rosengarten, deputy director of Im Tirtzu, a right-wing advocacy group participating in the march, said that walking in the Old City is not a provocation, but rather the “natural and historical right” of the Jewish people.
“Jerusalem is under Israel’s sovereignty; as far as we know, there has been no change in its status since the beginning of the war,” he said in a statement. “In every house that soldiers pass in Gaza, they find pictures of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, Hamas called the [October 7] operation the Al-Aqsa Flood. Tomorrow, with God’s help, we will fill Jerusalem with a flood of Israeli flags, strengthen the spirit of the people and remind the Middle East that we are here to stay.”
Am KeLavi, the organization that directs the march each year with the support of the Jerusalem municipality, said it expects some 60,000 to 100,000 people to attend, and plans on slightly modifying the event in light of Hamas’s October 7 attack and the ongoing war.
Bereaved families will lead the march. Shlomo Weitzen, the rabbi of the West Bank settlement Psagot, whose son died in battle on October 7, will open the event with a speech before it proceeds to the Western Wall. Organizers also agreed to change the official name of the event from its typical title, “Dance of Flags,” to simply “Flag March.”
Organizers said that the ongoing war is not just a cause for gloom, but also a realization of the hopes of many on the religious right to reconquer the Gaza Strip.
“It [the march] isn’t only about the liberation of the Western Wall and the Old City, it’s also about the liberation of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and this year it’s more timely because it’s also about the liberation of the Gaza Strip,” Meir Indor, one of the organizers of the parade, told The Times of Israel.
Indor was one of the founding participants of the annual event alongside several other religious Zionist students led by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who emerged soon after the Six Day War as the preeminent spiritual leader of the settler movement.
The event began in 1968 as a relatively small march of students at Kook’s yeshiva, Mercaz HaRav, but has since morphed into a massive event attended by countless religious Zionist youth groups, yeshivas and seminaries.
“Jerusalem is always in the center of the battles of our enemies,” said Indor, claiming that the march’s public display of Israeli sovereignty over the city has not just spiritual but strategic significance.
“Jewish rule is a larger guarantee of security,” he said. “Palestinian rule — that is where terror awakens.”
In addition to the crowds of young Israelis expected to throng the Old City, a cadre of left-wing activists with the organization Standing Together will show up as part of a “humanitarian guard” attempting to ward off any violence from marchers.
The left-wing movement, which takes issue not only with the march itself, but also the conduct of police, was planning to bring dozens of activists early in the morning to the Old City to dissuade alleged misconduct by law enforcement toward Palestinian shopkeepers.
“There is no other place in this country in which they pressure residents to close shops and evacuate the city center from its local residents so that people who don’t live in the area can come — this is something that occurs only in East Jerusalem,” said Suf Patishi, a Standing Together activist.
Although police have repeatedly emphasized over the years that they do not force Palestinians to close their shops on Jerusalem Day, officers often ask, and sometimes pressure, Old City residents to do so, which many shopkeepers lament costs them their livelihood.
The Times of Israel Community.