Israeli occupiers swept through the narrow streets of East Jerusalem on Thursday, chanting "Death to Arabs" and "May your villages burn" during a controversial march to mark the city's occupation, while many Palestinian residents remained barricaded indoors.
Over the years, the so-called Flag March has repeatedly descended into violence, with groups of young ultranationalists targeting Palestinians with racist chants, intimidation and assaults.
Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, home to a predominantly Palestinian population, in 1967 or its annexation in 1980, is not recognized by the United Nations.
Palestinians, who seek East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, say Israel has intensified efforts for decades to Judaize the city, including Al-Aqsa Mosque, and erase its Arab and Islamic identity.
This year's march comes against the backdrop of the Iran war and a cease-fire in Gaza, where the Israeli genocidal campaign has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since early October 2023.
Nationalist Israelis attacked Palestinian residents before the march began and damaged shop windows, the Haaretz newspaper reported.
Mustafa, a Palestinian resident of the Old City's Via Dolorosa, said young ultranationalist Israelis had broken into the courtyard of his home, breaking glass and chanting "Death to Arabs."
"This is a black day... I was inside the home when around 20 settlers came inside, they broke the doors," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"If you push them, you'll go to prison... you can't do anything."
Thousands marched along the main roads outside the Old City, among them teenagers draped in Israeli flags.
Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir forced his way into the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound again on Thursday.
A video showed Ben-Gvir raising the Israeli flag and dancing with a group of right-wing occupiers, with the Dome of the Rock mosque in the background.
Ben-Gvir staged a similar incursion into the mosque on Sunday, accompanied by occupiers, and performed Talmudic prayers within its courtyards.
Al-Aqsa Mosque is the world's third-holiest site for Muslims. Jews call the area Temple Mount, claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.
Another footage showed Knesset member Yitzhak Kroizer from Ben-Gvir's far-right Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party also storming the mosque and raising the Israeli flag.
About 620 Israeli occupiers stormed the mosque on Thursday under police protection, an official with the Islamic Waqf Department in the city, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Anadolu Agency (AA).
According to Israeli media, about 50,000 occupiers planned to attend the march.
Most Palestinian shopkeepers in the Old City had pulled down their metal shutters and deserted the stone alleyways.
A handful of shops remained open under the protection of activists from the Israeli-Palestinian grassroots movement Standing Together, who deployed across the Old City in an effort to shield Palestinian residents and businesses from harassment and attacks.
In one video, the youths hurled plastic chairs at a Palestinian shopkeeper. The shopkeeper appeared to throw one chair back before raising a stick in warning.
"The situation gets worse every year," one Palestinian shopkeeper told AFP, refusing to give his name for fear of reprisals.
Crowds chanted "Death to Arabs" and "May your villages burn" under the watch of Israeli police deployed throughout the area, according to an AFP correspondent and online footage.
Some people clapped, while others pounded on the metal shutters of closed Palestinian shops.
The crowds included some members of a hardline settler movement called Hilltop Youths, linked to near-daily attacks on Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
"They have no place here," said one of them, declining to give his name.
Marchers also confronted journalists, shoving them and blocking them from filming.
