A heavy day for Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa

Written by: Rasim Obeidat

Monday, May 26, 2025, marks the fifty-eighth anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem, the completion of the occupation of the eastern part of the city. The Flag March, or Flag Dance, was an annual tradition that the occupying state has been accustomed to. It began in 1968, a year after the June 1967 war, at the hands of Rabbi Yehuda Hizani. The first celebration was held at the “Merkez Harav,” meaning the rabbi’s center. This celebration was then officially inaugurated in 1974, on a broader and more comprehensive scale. It now receives financial support and backing from the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israeli Ministry of Education. Extremist settler and Talmudic organizations such as “Lahava,” known for its hatred and malice toward Arabs and Palestinians, students of the “Yeshvot” religious schools, and the “Yesha” settlement council participate in it. This march is organized by religious youth groups such as “Noani” and “Akiva,” and groups linked to the religious Zionist parties, “Jewish Power.” And "Religious Zionism (Ben Gvir and Smotrich)."

Until 2017, this march had a festive character, and was not allowed to enter the Old City of Jerusalem, nor pass through the Arab neighborhoods, especially the Muslim Quarter. However, after the widespread shifts that occurred in Israeli society towards the right and extremism, and the identification with the right-wing and extremist government, and the transition of extremist Zionist groups from the peripheries of the Zionist project to the heart of this project, which now control the joints of Israeli political decision-making, due to the disintegration of the major Israeli parties, and beyond that, they began to control the survival and fall of Israeli governments.

Since 2017, these marches have been a show of force. These marches are intended to assert sovereignty and control over Jerusalem, Israel's "eternal capital," and must assert this alleged sovereignty and control by entering the Old City and passing through its Arab neighborhoods. Rabbis, ministers, and members of the Knesset from the extreme right are now competing to lead and participate in them, which begin on the 28th of the Hebrew month of Shavuot, the anniversary of what is known as the unification of Jerusalem.

What distinguished Monday's march was that it came amidst major changes in the region, where "Israel" has been waging its war, which it calls existential, for more than 19 months on the Gaza Strip, with the aim of liquidating and uprooting the Palestinian people and ending their cause once and for all, through operations of expulsion, displacement and uprooting, and the final establishment of sovereignty and control over the city, and the Judaization of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, as the holiest place for the Jews, "the Temple Mount." Of course, this march came amidst a miserable and collapsing Arab-Islamic state, which seemed to have surrendered to the Israeli-American plan and project in the region.
What also distinguished this march, which transformed Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa into a musical stage and a display of power and political outbidding, was the large number of participating settlers, saturated with hatred, racism and extremism, as they performed Talmudic and Torah dances in Bab al-Amud Square, waving Israeli flags in large numbers, and chanting racist and extremist slogans, which reflect the essence of their Zionist project based on the expulsion and displacement of our Palestinian people, and the exclusion and elimination of all manifestations of their existence. Among the slogans that were raised and the chants that were launched were: “In 1967, Jerusalem is in our hands,” “In 2025, Gaza is in our hands,” “No victory without a Nakba,” “Mohammed is dead,” “Burn Shuafat,” “Erase Gaza from existence,” and “Let us build the temple, and the time has come to build the temple and ascend to it.”
In light of these noisy celebrations in Bab al-Amud Square, Sheikh Jarrah, al-Suwaneh, Silwan, in the heart of al-Aqsa Mosque, and at the Western Wall, where tens of thousands of settlers performed their Talmudic and biblical rituals and dances, including the “Hora” dance, with the participation of US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirsty Noam and the participation of government ministers and Knesset members from various political factions, “Likud,” “Religious Zionism,” “Jewish Power,” and “Israel Our Homeland,” a religious and national Zionist consensus was reflected on the issue of sovereignty and control over the city of Jerusalem, considering it the “eternal capital of Israel” and not subject to division again, and an absolute rejection of the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state. This Zionist consensus was manifested in participation in the celebrations and the show of force in Bab al-Amud Square, al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Western Wall, where among the participants were Ministers Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, Yitzhak Wasserlauf, Zvi Sukkot, and Ariel Vilner, and Knesset members who participated in They danced and raised flags, celebrated and danced, stormed the Old City and assaulted merchants, children, women, the elderly, journalists and media professionals, and made racist and provocative statements. They turned Al-Aqsa into a stage for singing, bidding and political parades. They held a government session in an underground fortress in the town of Silwan, which they call the City of David. They stormed the surrounding towns in Jerusalem, danced and sang in Sheikh Jarrah, Al-Suwaneh and Ras Al-Amud, and prevented the residents of Silwan from parking their cars in front of their homes. They went to the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Refugee Agency in Sheikh Jarrah and assaulted it, led by a member of the Knesset from the "Israel Beitenu" party, Julia Milinovsky, demanding to seize it, in a clear targeting of the United Nations Relief and Refugee Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
The agency’s main headquarters was attacked by settlers led by Ben Gvir more than once, threatening the workers with their lives if they continued to work there. Later, in October 2024, the Israeli Knesset passed a law in three readings, considering the Relief Agency an agency outside the law, and canceled the immunity and privileges enjoyed by its workers. It is not permissible to deal with it or communicate with it. They demanded that the agency pay financial compensation of 27 million shekels for using the headquarters in illegal ways, considering that the land of this headquarters is owned by the Jewish Agency, and the headquarters will be converted into a settlement outpost (1440) settlement units.
This march, with this momentum, this number of settlers, and these types of participants, and the slogans and chants that were raised and launched, clearly say that what awaits Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa in the coming days is extremely dangerous. If the Arab and Islamic situation continues in its miserable, deplorable and shameful state, Al-Aqsa will go beyond temporal and spatial divisions, and even create sanctity and Jewish life in the place, as an Islamic-Jewish partnership initially on the path to establishing a synagogue in the eastern region instead of the Bab al-Rahma prayer hall, while awaiting the slaughter of one of the five red cows in the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and then the establishment of the alleged Third Temple instead of the Dome of the Rock Mosque.
As for Jerusalem, it is moving towards Judaization and Israelization, and the planting of settlements and outposts in its Arab neighborhoods, in order to prevent its Palestinian villages and towns from remaining geographically and demographically connected, and to systematically dismantle its social and national unity, transforming it into scattered islands in a vast Israeli environment.
But in the end we say that there is a state of obstruction to the implementation of these projects and plans, led by the Palestinian steadfastness and perseverance on the land and adherence to it, and the insistence on thwarting these projects and plans, despite all the military, security and financial driving force behind them, and the repression, abuse, settlement, home demolitions, expulsion, displacement and ethnic cleansing. Jerusalem, which is being transformed into a military barracks on this day, and more than 3,000 policemen and border guards are being mobilized to provide protection for this march, and roads are being closed and the movement of Jerusalemites in the city is paralyzed and fixed and mobile police checkpoints are deployed at its gates and entrances, saying that this Arab city is occupied and divided and not united.
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What awaits Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa in the coming days is extremely dangerous. If the Arab and Islamic situation continues in its miserable, deplorable and shameful state, Al-Aqsa will go beyond the divisions of time and space.
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