Jerusalem holy site clashes fuel fears of return to war
As we waited to see exactly what would happen, so was Israel’s prime minister. A right-wing nationalist himself, some of those here once supported Naftali Bennett. But not anymore. Angry chants on Wednesday told him to “go home”. “We came here because it’s the Passover holiday, to show that this city is ours, that it belongs to the nation of Israel,” said Matan, gripping the hand of his smallest child. “This is our city, our capital, our country.” The prevailing feeling was that as the leader of an ideologically diverse coalition, which includes an Arab Islamist party, Mr Bennett had sold out and failed to deal effectively with recent tensions in Jerusalem. A prominent banner declared his rival, the opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, to be “king”, and there were big cheers for far-right politician, Itamar Ben Gvir. He told me that Mr Bennett was being held back from doing the correct thing by his fragile government, which recently lost its parliamentary majority after one of h...