Palestinians wave flags and celebrate outside Damascus Gate on April 25, 2021, after barriers put up by Israeli police were removed, allowing them to access the main square that has been the focus of a week of clashes around Jerusalem's Old City [Reuters/Ammar Awad]
For us Jerusalemites, it is frankly nauseating to hear commentators throw around cliches of “cycle of violence”, call for a “return to calm”, and generally engage in bothsidesism, whenever violence erupts. And in the past few weeks, we have heard them yet again. There are no two equal sides in Jerusalem.
The problem with these statements is that they whitewash the fact that Jerusalem is a city under violent occupation and its occupier, Israel, has made its intent to slowly uproot the native population quite public.