"GOD'S CHOSEN"
Israeli nationalists and police clashed with Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem yesterday as crowds of Jewish hardliners marched across the city to mark the 48th anniversary of its capture.
Known as Jerusalem Day, the anniversary marks Israel’s seizure in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexation of mainly Arab East Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community.
Police said that two officers were wounded by Palestinian stone throwers and at least four protesters arrested near the walled Old City’s Damascus Gate.
Demonstrators were dispersed by baton-wielding police, some on horseback.
A police statement said that in one incident “several dozen Muslims scuffled with a group of Jews”.
Onlookers said that at least two Palestinians were wounded in various clashes and video footage showed a man being taken away on a stretcher by Red Crescent ambulance staff.
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Police would not say how many jubilant Zionists were descending on the Old City’s Muslim Quarter on their way to pray at the Western Wall Jewish holy site but said “large crowds” were expected.
“They are coming here with the support of an extremist government that paid for their buses,” a Palestinian woman, Muna Barbar, said outside Damascus Gate.
The Palestinians want the eastern sector of the city as the capital of their promised state, and vigorously oppose any attempt to extend Israeli control.
But Israeli leaders have repeatedly vowed that the city will never again be split, calling it their “eternal, indivisible” capital.
“Israel has always been the capital of the Jewish people alone and not of any other people,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at an official Jerusalem Day ceremony.
“A divided Jerusalem is a past memory: the future belongs to a complete Jerusalem which will not be divided again.”
Jerusalem Day is marked by a series of state ceremonies and an annual march through western Jerusalem and into the east side, which is predominantly attended by nationalist hardliners.
Every year, police deploy in strength to secure the march, which frequently provokes clashes.
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