Damascus Gate
Damascus GateOlivier Fitoussi/Flash 90

Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai on Sunday evening ordered the removal of the checkpoints and barricades at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem.

Following the announcement, hundreds of young Arabs in the area began "victory celebrations" in which they chanted, "In blood and fire we will redeem Palestine."

The checkpoints were erected at the start of the Ramadan holiday, and according to the Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem, the violent disturbances in recent nights have taken place due to the blocking of the space where they usually sit.

MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint List) arrived at the Damascus Gate on Sunday evening and accused the "occupation police together with the settlers", as he put it, of closing the complex at the Damascus Gate.

"All of Ramadan is part of the heritage - the social gathering of the young. This is the creation of a new reality, the Palestinians and eastern Jerusalemites are angry and rightly so - it is a provocation. You can restore calm by removing the police," he said.

Otzma Yehudit chairman MK Itamar Ben Gvir said that "the decision of the Commissioner of Police to allow the rioters at the Damascus Gate a victory by removing the barricades is a shameful caving in and a severe violation of Israeli sovereignty. Every lawbreaker will know that the State of Israel will bow down and surrender if he carries out acts of lynching Jews. The Israeli government and the Jerusalem police surrendered to violence tonight and folded - this folding will cost us a lot of blood."

The chairman of the Religious Zionist Party, MK Bezalel Smotrich, criticized the removal of the checkpoints and said that "too often the State of Israel transmits weakness, succumbs to terrorism and violence and suffers twice as much. Whoever flees from terrorism, terrorism pursues him. These are the rules of the game in the Middle East."

"The Arab riots in Jerusalem must be cut short and the law must be exhausted with the utmost severity with the terrorists and we must not succumb to their demands and thus erode Israeli deterrence and send a message of weakness to our enemies around us," Smotrich added.