JERUSALEM — Tens of thousands of nationalist marchers moved through the narrow lanes of Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday in an annual procession that drew heavy security deployments, sporadic clashes near the Muslim Quarter’s gates, and sharp condemnation from Palestinian officials who described the march as a deliberate provocation in one of the world’s most politically and religiously sensitive urban environments.
The march, which takes place each year in late spring to mark the anniversary of Israeli forces gaining control of the eastern portion of the city during the 1967 war, drew participants from across the country waving flags and chanting slogans as they moved through the area near Damascus Gate and along the outer perimeter of the Muslim Quarter before concluding at the Western Wall plaza. Organizers estimated attendance at roughly 70,000; police figures were somewhat lower.
Israeli police deployed an estimated 3,000 officers throughout the Old City and surrounding neighborhoods, establishing checkpoints along major approach routes and stationing mounted units near Damascus Gate, which has historically been the primary flashpoint for confrontation between marchers and residents. Border Police units in riot gear were positioned at the main entrances to the Muslim Quarter, restricting access for non-marchers during the peak hours of the procession.
Confrontations broke out at two points along the route. In one incident near the Cotton Merchants Gate, officers fired stun grenades to disperse a group of young men who had gathered on a rooftop and were throwing objects toward marchers below. Three people were detained at that location. A second disturbance near Herod’s Gate involved pushing and shoving between marchers and local residents; two individuals were treated for minor injuries by paramedics on scene. No firearms were discharged, and police described the overall security situation as “tense but controlled.”
Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah issued a statement condemning the march as “an act of systematic incitement” and called on the international community to intervene to protect Palestinian residents and holy sites. Hamas, the militant organization that governs the Gaza Strip, issued a communiqué urging resistance, though no significant organized response materialized during the course of the march itself.
“Every year this route is used as a statement of dominance over this space, over these streets, over the people who live here,” said Layla Mansour, a resident of the Muslim Quarter who watched the procession from a second-floor window with her family. “We lock our shops. We keep our children inside. This is our neighborhood and on this day we are made to feel that we do not belong in it.”
Organizers of the march offered a sharply different framing. “This is a celebration of reunification, of the fact that Jewish people can now pray freely at the holiest site in our tradition,” said Yoav Stein, a spokesman for one of the coordinating organizations. “We have a legal right to march this route, affirmed repeatedly by Israeli courts, and we will continue to exercise it.”
International observers, including diplomats from the United States, the European Union, and Jordan — which holds custodial authority over Islamic holy sites in the city under a long-standing bilateral agreement — had urged Israeli authorities in the days before the march to consider rerouting the procession away from the most sensitive sections of the Muslim Quarter. Those requests were not accommodated. A Jordanian Foreign Ministry spokesperson called the march’s path “unacceptable” and said Amman had conveyed its objections through formal diplomatic channels.
The Waqf, the Islamic trust that administers the Temple Mount compound, reported that access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the broader esplanade was restricted for male worshippers under the age of 40 for much of the day as a precautionary security measure. The practice of age-based access restrictions during periods of elevated tension is employed periodically by Israeli security authorities and itself generates protest from Muslim civic and religious groups who argue it constitutes discriminatory interference in religious practice.
With the region already under heightened strain following months of violence in the West Bank — where fatality figures on both sides have reached levels not seen since the early 2000s — analysts said the march’s passage without a larger escalation represented a marginal relief in the immediate term, while cautioning that no aspect of the underlying structural conditions driving periodic eruptions of violence had changed. The same route, the same calendar date, and the same deep disagreements over sovereignty and identity will return, they noted, next year.