Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a rocket into Israel on Wednesday, the army said, as tensions soared with police in Jerusalem blocking Jewish ultra-nationalist protesters from approaching the Old City’s Muslim quarter.
While the Gaza rocket caused no injures — a fragment fell in the yard of a home in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, police said — it raises tensions further following nearly a month of deadly violence in Israel and the Palestinian Territories.
The rocket is the second this week to be fired from Gaza, and the first to hit Israel in months.
Last year, the Islamist Hamas movement — rulers of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza — launched a barrage of rockets towards Israel when a similar ultra-nationalist march was to begin in the Old City, sparking an 11-day war.
More than a thousand ultra-nationalist demonstrators waving Israeli flags gathered in the early evening, but the police blocked the crowds from reaching Damascus Gate, the main entrance to the Muslim quarter.
Among the demonstrators were supporters of far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir, a controversial opposition politician. Some in the crowd shouted “death to the Arabs”.
Israeli far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir, raises an Israeli flag in Jerusalem on April 20 / © AFP
“We want to go to all of Jerusalem and our government is not letting us,” said Pnina, a 62-year-old civil servant.
Ben Gvir himself had been barred from the area of Damascus Gate earlier in the day by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
“I’ll say it clearly, I’m not going to blink, not going to fold,” Ben Gvir said. “I’m not allowed to enter Damascus gate. Based on what law?”
– ‘Provocation’ –
Israel / © AFP
Tensions are high with the Jewish Passover festival coinciding with the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
On Tuesday, Israel carried out its first air strike on the Gaza Strip in months, in response to a rocket fired from the Palestinian enclave late Monday after a weekend of violence around a Jerusalem holy site.
“Some Jews don’t surrender to Hamas,” Ben Gvir added.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the deteriorating situation in Jerusalem”, and was in contact with parties to press them “to do all they can to lower tensions, avoid inflammatory actions and rhetoric,” according to a statement by his spokesperson in New York.
Bennett had said earlier in a statement he had blocked Ben Gvir’s rally for security reasons.
“I have no intention of allowing petty politics to endanger human lives,” Bennett said in a statement.
“I will not allow a political provocation by Ben Gvir to endanger IDF (Israeli army) soldiers and Israeli police officers, and render their already heavy task even heavier”.
Ben Gvir responded on Twitter, saying that “Bennett, coalition security is not state security”.
Bennett, himself a right-winger and a key figure in Israel’s settlement movement, leads an ideologically divided coalition government.
Earlier this month, his coalition lost its one-seat majority in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament, after a member left in a dispute over the use of leavened bread products in hospitals during Passover.
Many of the protesters carried the Israeli flag / © AFP
Then on Sunday, the Raam party, drawn from the country’s Arab-Israeli minority, suspended its support for the coalition following violence in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Clashes there between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli forces left around 170 injured on Friday and Sunday.
Prior to that, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs launched four deadly attacks in late March and early this month in the Jewish state that claimed 14 lives, mostly civilians.
A total of 23 Palestinians have meanwhile been killed in the violence since March 22, including assailants who targeted Israelis, according to an AFP tally.
Right-wing lawmakers are under pressure to quit Israel’s government, which is seen by some on the right as being too favourable to Palestinians and Israel’s Arab minority.
