Waving PA flags, thousands protest Jewish presence in east Jerusalem
Clashes between Jews and Arabs continued on Saturday near the grave site of Shimon HaTzaddik in east Jerusalem as several thousand Arabs protested alongside radical Jewish leftists and anarchists against the Jewish presence in Arab neighborhoods.
Waving Palestinian Authority flags and throwing rocks at Jewish homes, the demonstrators took advantage of a court order Saturday night permitting them to protest against a previous court order allowing Jews to live in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood, also known as Sheikh Jarrah and located near Mt. Scopus.
MK Aryeh Eldad (National Union) pointed out the “chutzpah of the Israeli left” who complained when the court criticized the police for banning their demonstrations because of ensuing violence. Eldad said that the same radicals “are lawbreakers who prefer to hide behind the courts only when it acts against Jews. In all other cases, they turn into a mob of lawbreakers.”
The rally at Sheikh Jarrah protested a court order requiring several Arab squatter families to leave homes owned by Jews from before the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Eldad charged the demonstrators with being “collaborators with the enemies of Israel.”
Waving PLO flags showing hand-clenched rifles, the demonstrators shouted, “In blood, in fire, we’ll redeem Palestine.”
The Jews who owned homes in the area were forced out under the British Mandate. The area was under Jordanian rule from the 1948 War of Independence until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Jerusalem was reunited under Israeli sovereignty.
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