The Israelis celebrate the "Unification of Jerusalem" day, which they consider a "national holiday" to commemorate the completion of Israel's control over the city of Jerusalem, and the occupation of the eastern part of it, especially the Old City, during the June War of 1967.

The celebration of this occasion according to the Hebrew calendar is determined on the 28th of the eighth month of the Hebrew year.

The ceremonial "Flags' March" is the most prominent celebration of this day, and it starts annually from the agreed gathering place west of Jerusalem after the gathering of participants, who may number about 30 thousand participants.

The march starts across Street No. (1) and passes through two of the gates of Old Jerusalem, Bab al-Khalil and al-Jadid, and then reaches Bab al-Amud, where the march faces Palestinian protests despite all the checkpoints set up by the police in the vicinity of al-Bab.

There, the Jerusalemites insist on gathering and sitting on the grandstand to confront the march in which the Israeli flags are raised in a provocative manner, while chanting the national anthem “Hatikvah” and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim slogans.

The settlers continue their march from Bab al-Amoud towards al-Buraq Square, passing through the Islamic Quarter, and are keen to damage shops and properties of Jerusalemites and attack those who find them in their way.

This march is organized to commemorate the memory of the extremist settler Yehuda Hazani, who died in 1992 and was the initiator, first organizer and head of it for many years. He was also one of the founders of the "Gush Emunim" settlement group, and a number of settlements in the West Bank.

The extremist settler Yehuda Hazani was the first to organize this march (Reuters)

Veneration of the alleged temple

Followers of the religious nationalist movement, who form the core of the settlement movement in the occupied West Bank and the vicinity of occupied Jerusalem, participate in the march. Therefore, the march annually includes reverent chants of Jerusalem and the “Temple” as well as chants and obscene words offensive to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

The researcher in Jerusalem affairs Ziyad Abhis said that from 1968 until 2000, celebrating this occasion took the form of a parade at the level of the occupying state by organizing military parades in which they salute their dead who fell in battle, and reviewing the state’s achievements.

But after the year 2000, the celebrations began to take the form of a popular display of the "Jewish identity predominance in Jerusalem." One of its essentials is to roam the Old City, deliberately entering the participating settlers through the gates of the column, the vigil, and the tribes that lead to the Islamic neighborhoods, with an attempt to dedicate Bab al-Amud as the main entrance to the procession. .

The danger has doubled, according to the researcher residing in Jordan, with the extremists trying to add a new dimension to the celebration by calling for a mass storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2019 and this year, which coincided with Ramadan 28, even though this holiday is classified as a national, not a religious, holiday.

The researcher believes that the extremists deliberately added a new dimension, “to say that we perform our rituals and prayers in it and declare our religious sovereignty over it, hence the launch of the last war in light of an attempt to practice a religious substitution from Al-Aqsa, and to take Al-Quds Day as a culmination of this religious substitution by saying that this mosque is a Jewish holy No Islamic.

refraction compensation

The new method of celebration put the extremist temple groups in a dilemma because they broke down this year and did not succeed in organizing their celebrations on this day and what preceded and followed it, and in light of the inability of the right-wing parties to swallow this decline, they resorted for the first time to announcing the organization of a “compensatory” march according to the Gregorian date, which does not They walk accordingly at all.

And the announcement of organizing the compensatory march next Thursday was rejected by the Inspector General of Police and canceled, and the reason for this is, according to Abhis, "because now a door has opened before them for a new confrontation. There is a new balance of power if they do not recognize it, they will clash with it every time and the door will open to their defeat time after time."

He concluded his speech to Al Jazeera Net by saying that the Israeli police were motivated by the force they faced on the Gaza front and a bond in Jerusalem and the Palestinian interior that prevented settlers from organizing the march, and this led to a state of internal conflict because the Israeli right wants to review the position of absolute identity control itself in Jerusalem, and the state is concerned Ban him now because she has become damaged by reviewing this situation in a practical and experimental way.

It is noteworthy that 35,000 Jerusalemites living within the walls of the Old City are directly affected by the "flags dance", where the police prevent them from moving to and from their homes and settlers assault them as soon as they approach the iron barriers and barriers erected around the Old City, and this leads to the outbreak of confrontations annually.