These pilgrims, mostly from Arab towns in northern Israel, made it to the Old City for evening prayers after hiking more than 30 kilometers (19 miles).
For weeks, the raw emotional, religious and nationalistic power of Jerusalem has been out of control, driven by a deadly convergence of interconnected and disparate events, all taking place during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which often sees heightened tensions.
The Israel Defense Forces, Shin Bet security service, and Israel Police have struggled to contain the violence and have enjoyed little assistance from the political echelon in attempting to do so, with Israeli lawmakers failing to cooperate with one another as the various parties struggle to form a government coalition.
The Sheikh Jarrah flashpoint
The driver of this current unrest is a deeply contentious court case regarding the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where a number of Arab families stand to be forcibly evicted from homes they’ve lived in for decades. Right-wing Israeli nationalists argued successfully that the properties were owned by Jews before Jordan conquered the area and resettled the current occupants there, and invoked a 1970 law that allows, for all intents and purposes, only Jewish Israelis to reclaim property that was lost to them during the 1948 Independence War.
While the Israeli government has — fairly unconvincingly — attempted to portray this as a “real-estate dispute between two private parties,” the looming eviction of these families has been taken as emblematic of a movement within Israel to move Jewish Israelis into areas that have been historically inhabited by Arabs.
The impending eviction has prompted concern from the Biden administration and drawn criticism from allies throughout Europe, as well as Israel’s newfound friends in the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. READ MORE
