JERUSALEM: Palestinian traders in Jerusalem’s Old City returned to their shops on Tuesday to clean up a day after a march by Israeli nationalists that saw scuffles, insults and acts of vandalism. Some had to use crowbars, hammers and wirecutters to regain access to their own shops after many were vandalised during the Jerusalem Day march the day before.

Jerusalem Day commemorates Israeli forces taking east Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

On Tuesday, metal shutters protecting the shopfronts bore the marks of the parade’s passing, with padlocks blocked and stickers slapped upon them. No humanitarian aid for Gaza,” read one sticker from Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power).

The far-right party headed by firebrand politician and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir had a major presence in Monday’s march. Ben Gvir visited the Al Aqsa mosque compound.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem, including the annexed Palestinian-majority east, its indivisible capital. The international community does not recognise this, and Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

On Tuesday, when employees of an east Jerusalem electricity supplier arrived at their office they discovered the front windows broken and the door blocked.

‘Childish acts’

A company official, Ismail Eshqart, came from headquarters to change the lock and assess the damage. He said they had expected “a little more tension” than usual this year in the alley in the Muslim Quarter where Palestinians and a few Israeli residents, mostly religious Jews, mingle daily.

He said there had been “deliberate acts of vandalism”, but he did not name the suspected perpetrators. “It’s the same story every year,” said clothes seller Abu Osama, referring to Jerusalem Day marchers.

“They come and attack shops, make them close, and they break things, they throw firecrackers,” he said as a municipal employee arrived with an electric saw to cut the padlock on the door of his sabotaged shop.

“They do what they want and nobody says to them ‘what are you doing? That’s not allowed’!” Abu Osama added, angry at lost time over “childish acts” that made him open several hours late. Fruit sellers at stalls in front of the Damascus Gate into the Old City shared his dismay, but shrugged as they unloaded boxes of cherries and peaches.

“The situation is worse and worse,” said grandmother Umm Mohammed who was born in the Old City and had come to do her shopping.

‘It’s crazy!’

“We want to live in peace — we are kind people,” she said, adding that she did not leave the house on Monday. Umm Mohammed said that last year, one man she knows “came out of his house and they hit him — and he is a big guy!” Armed with solvent and sponges, a group of around 10 Israeli and foreign volunteers arrived on Tuesday morning to help clean up in the march’s aftermath.

“I came to do what I could, even if it’s not much,” said one volunteer who asked not to be identified. They scuttled between the shops, trying to avoid police patrols, but several were briefly stopped for allegedly disturbing the peace.

“It’s really upside down. It’s crazy,” said 24-year-old Joshua Korn of the Israeli-Palestinian activist group Standing Together. “It’s crazy because these people who are here to protect us... they shout at us that we’re provoking... just because we’re here to remove racist graffiti and stickers that have been put up by settlers in an act of provocation!” Korn said of the police.

Published in Dawn, May 28th, 2025