Tensions run high amid Israeli march

JERUSALEM — Tens of thousands of Israeli nationalists marched to Jerusalem's Old City on Thursday in an annual flag-waving march commemorating Israel's capture of it, as tensions on the Gaza border remained high.

Before the march began, Palestinians in East Jerusalem closed their shops and were banned from the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City, a social hub, to make way for the marchers, some of whom attacked journalists with rocks and bottles, Agence France-Presse reported.

Police said they made two arrests over the attack, one of an adult and one of a minor.

The United States, Israel's main ally, condemned demonstrators' "racist" chants against Arabs on Thursday, with reporters saying that many of the marchers had shouted anti-Arab slogans.

In Gaza, thousands gathered for a rival flag day on the Israeli border, many of them holding Palestinian flags.

Israeli troops fired tear gas toward anyone approaching the border fence, media reported.

A Palestinian security source in Gaza said the territory's Islamist rulers, Hamas, fired a "warning rocket" into the sea, without elaborating.

Ahead of the Israeli march, the militant group said it "condemns the campaign of the Zionist occupation (Israel) against our Palestinian people in occupied Jerusalem".

A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned Israel against "insisting on organizing the provocative flag march".

Pushing ahead with the parade "confirms the acquiescence of the Israeli government to Jewish extremists", spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said on Wednesday.

Bitter history

Two years ago, after weeks of violence in Jerusalem in which scores of Palestinians were wounded, a conflict between Hamas and Israel erupted during the march.

Following the 1967 Middle East War, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and its Old City in a move never recognized by the international community.

Thursday's rally took place days into a cease-fire that ended deadly cross-border fighting with Islamic Jihad militants in Gaza.

Thirty-three people, including multiple civilians, were killed in the blockaded Palestinian enclave and two in Israel, a citizen and a Gazan laborer.

Thursday's march began in the western part of the city before passing into East Jerusalem and through the Old City to the Western Wall, where about 50,000 people took part in the Jewish evening prayer.

Those marching were mostly young men, with some wearing white T-shirts and carrying Israeli flags, as about 2,500 police officers looked on.

Scuffles between Jewish and Palestinian youths took place as early marchers arrived in the Old City.

But the violence was greatly reduced from last year, when at least 79 people were wounded as police clashed with Palestinian counterprotesters outside the Damascus Gate.

Before the march, dozens of Jews — including at least three lawmakers from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party — visited Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site.

Jews, who call it the Temple Mount and revere it as their religion's holiest site, are allowed to visit but not pray.

Agencies Via Xinhua