Police were gearing up for friction ahead of the annual Jerusalem Day Flag March on Monday, which will see thousands of national religious Israelis parade through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter toward the Western Wall.
Thousands of officers and border guards will be deployed in Jerusalem on the holiday, which marks the reunification of the city in the 1967 Six Day War.
Extremist Jewish youth attending the Flag March have been known to harass and beat Palestinians during the procession, especially as it enters the Old City through the Muslim Quarter’s Damascus Gate.
Flag March organizer Meir Indor told The Times of Israel that the procession will be led by families of terror attack victims alongside members of the hawkish Tikva Forum, a group of hostages’ family members who believe that only continuing the war will free their loved ones.
He said that several government ministers will give speeches before the march kicks off, but declined to name them.
Last year’s Flag March opened with a speech from National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir outside the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem. Organizers handed out stickers — soon plastered throughout the Old City — depicting the far-right leader holding an Israeli flag with the slogan: “Flying the flag with power.”
Revelers will march under the slogan “from victory to victory,” Indor added, linking Israel’s past triumph in the Six Day War to the ongoing offensive in Gaza.
The parade will take its usual route, with marchers setting out from the Jerusalem Great Synagogue at around 4 p.m, continuing into the Old City via Damascus Gate, and ending at the Western Wall.
An alternative route for women will begin on Bezalel Street and skirt the Muslim Quarter, snaking around the perimeter of the Old City’s southern wall.
To make way for the marchers, police will close several roads to traffic, including the main thoroughfare between West and East Jerusalem.
Police said in a Sunday afternoon statement that they would “work to prevent all forms of violence or provocation.” They further called on participants and the wider public to “refrain from physical or verbal violence, and allow the event to proceed peacefully and lawfully.”
Last year’s march saw several attacks on Palestinians and journalists by marchers, who chanted anti-Arab refrains and plastered stickers on shuttered shops supporting the ideology of the late ultranationalist rabbi Meir Kahane and calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
Officers arrested 18 people for violent offenses over the course of the day.
In addition to the crowds of national religious youth expected to parade through 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 and police.
The initiative was first launched last year with around 20 people. This year, organizer Suf Patishi expects the initiative to draw at least 50 volunteer activists early Monday morning to Jerusalem, where they will don purple vests and attempt to de-escalate potentially violent situations.
Also on the morning of the march, volunteers with the Tag Meir coexistence group will hand out flowers to Palestinian shopkeepers and residents of the Old City.
The yearly “Flower March” aims to express “hope and the desire for a shared future” between Israelis and Palestinians, the group said in a statement.
Also slated to take place in parallel with the Flag March is the alternative “Yellow Flags March” in support of a hostage deal, organized by several hostage and anti-government activist groups, chief among them the Jerusalem-based Safeguarding our Shared Home.
The march will take place entirely in West Jerusalem, beginning at 5 p.m. outside the Israel Museum and culminating outside the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Activists from the Safeguarding our Shared Home also plan to hand out flyers to national religious youth ahead of their march into the Old City, urging them to refrain from violence and restore the event to its former values of “unity and mutual respect.”
Eyal Gur, one of the movement’s activists, said the group will hand out the flyers out of “deep love for Jerusalem and genuine care for the youth marching through it.”
Last week, the organization sent out a letter to national religious movements and schools bringing students to the event, warning against violent behavior amid widespread concern that the march has increasingly come to represent a “sectarian show of force” against Muslim, Christian and Armenian residents of the Old City.