Yom Yerushalayim, the 22nd anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem, was celebrated by thousands of Israelis Thursday while violence continued unabated in the West Bank.
There were speeches, marches and rallies in the Old City, captured by Israel in 1967, and conditions generally were peaceful under heavy police protection.
But extreme right-wingers, led by Knesset members Geula Cohen and Eliezer Waldman of Tehiya and Rehavam Ze’evi of Moledet, marched through the Moslem Quarter and got pelted with bottles by Arab youths. The march ended with a peaceful rally in the Jewish Quarter.
Police fired tear gas and wielded nightsticks to forestall a potential riot.
Parades that bypassed Arab neighborhoods generated no disturbances.
The police backed off from their earlier ban on waving Israeli flags in the Old City, it did prevent Jewish demonstrators from carrying nationalist posters.
A group known as the “Temple Mount Faithful,” which calls for Jewish seizure of the Temple Mount, site of the Dome of the Rock, were allowed to enter the “Temple mount in pairs but without flags.
Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin delivered the Jerusalem Day keynote speech, at memorial service for Six-Day War dead on Mount Herzl.
Rabin drew a parallel between the efforts of Arab armies to destroy Israel with tanks, bombs and artillery and the present-day attempts with “stones, bottles and the present-day attempts with “stones, bottles and knives.”
According to Rabin, “There is no easy solution because the purpose of our enemies is still the same evil purpose; to get rid of us and take over our places.”
Even as Rabin spoke, riots were breaking out in the Nablus casbah. About 50 Palestinians were reported wounded in clashes with Israeli security forces there.
The Israel Defense Force raided the nearby Arab town of Salfit, which was placed under a general curfew. Soldiers rounded up suspects.
One West Bank Arab, a resident of Yabad village, was murdered Thursday, apparently for alleged collaboration with the Israeli authorities.
Another suspected collaborator in Nablus was attacked with a hatchet and severely wounded.
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