OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: At least 40,000 Jewish Israelis joined a Jerusalem Day parade in the city’s mainly Arab eastern sector Wednesday to celebrate its capture 44 years ago during the 1967 war.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said “more than 40,000 people” turned up for the march, due to end inside the Old City at the Western Wall, one of the holiest sites in Judaism.
Five Palestinians were arrested for throwing stones at Israelis in the flashpoint East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, although this was not directly linked to the march.
At Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Old City from East Jerusalem, Israeli marchers were seen chanting “death to the Arabs” and throwing vegetables, sticks and stones at Palestinians, some of whom threw stones back.
As the demonstrators arrived, Palestinians in the Old City and elsewhere in East Jerusalem shut their shops to avoid confrontation, leaving the area almost empty of locals.
Over 3,000 police were deployed in and around the city to ensure the festivities went off without a hitch, Rosenfeld said, with forces on alert for any friction caused by the march.
In an address to Parliament Wednesday, Netanyahu vowed to continue building in the city, which now has more than 200,000 Jewish Israelis living in the eastern Arab sector which it occupied in 1967.
“Our generation liberated, and today is building, Jerusalem,” he told MPs. “The next generation will surely build it further and I believe that Jerusalem will quickly become an international city of which we can be proud.”