Palestinian protesters shout slogans during a rally yesterday near the Erez border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel.
AFP/Gaza
Thousands of Palestinians marched from Gaza City to close to the Israeli border yesterday to demand the liberation of East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the June 1967 Middle East war.
“We’re going to Jerusalem, martyrs in our millions,” the demonstrators chanted, as they approached the Beit Hanoun area in the northern Gaza Strip close to the border.
Supporters of the Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas joined those of the Islamist Hamas movement that rules Gaza on the march.
In an address to the crowd, Hamas member of parliament Ahmed Abu Halabiya urged the rival factions to “end the division and achieve reconciliation to unite our efforts to support Jerusalem and Al Aqsa”.
The Al Aqsa mosque compound in the heart of East Jerusalem’s Old City is Islam’s third holiest site.
Abu Halabiya’s comments came a day after a new government was sworn in in the West Bank without the recognition of the Hamas rulers of Gaza.
Six years after Abbas’s forces were ousted from Gaza, effectively cleaving the Palestinian territories in two, the rival sides have failed to restore a single administration despite agreements in principle in both 2011 and 2012.
Banners carried by the demonstrators in Gaza called for “resistance (as) the only way to free Jerusalem”, and said: “Jerusalem is being Judaised while Muslims sleep.”
The demonstration was organised by the Global March to Jerusalem. Similar events were organised in Jordan and other countries.
Israel annexed East Jerusalem in a move never recognised by the international community and insists on retaining the whole city as its “eternal, indivisible capital.”
The Palestinians want the city’s eastern sector as capital of their future state.
*The Israeli navy has arrested two Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast, sources on both sides said yesterday.
“The occupation navy boarded a fishing boat off Nuseirat (in central Gaza), arrested the two fishermen and took them to an unknown destination,” a source in the Gaza Fishermen’s Syndicate said.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said: “Two fishermen were outside the authorised fishing zone. They were detained for questioning in the night.”
