MIDDLE EAST EYE Palestine | Jerusalem | Conflict 23 March 2028
The Jerusalem Intifada
On 22–23 March 2028, eleven months after Israel’s indefinite closure of both the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound triggered mass protests and the deaths of two Palestinian Christians, a second wave of violence transformed the nature of the confrontation. The event is already being described by participants and analysts alike as the Jerusalem Intifada.
Day One — The Flag
On 22 March 2028, crowds gathered at every gate of the Old City, larger than any since the closures themselves — Christians and Muslims together, united in protest. The IDF cordon around Al-Aqsa had been reinforced overnight. Border Police units conducted a systematic, clearly pre-planned detention operation, transporting detainees not to the traditional Russian Compound facility but to temporary facilities in the industrial zone east of the city — facilities that witnesses said appeared to have been prepared in advance.
It was in this context that Yousef Haddad, 44, a carpenter from Beit Jala, made his way to the street outside the northern gate of the Al-Aqsa compound and raised a flag bearing the Jerusalem Cross — the standard of the Latin Patriarchate, the flag Palestinian Christians have carried in these streets for centuries. He was not throwing stones. He was not armed. A single shot from the IDF cordon approximately forty metres away killed him.
The photograph of Yousef Haddad, taken by veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass, ran on the front pages of fifty-three newspapers in thirty-one countries within hours. By the following morning it had been seen by an estimated 400 million people.
Yousef’s father, Georges Haddad, had been killed at the Jaffa Gate eleven months earlier, on the day the holy sites were first closed — a retired mathematics teacher, 71 years old, holding his rosary. Yousef was holding the Jerusalem Cross.
By nightfall, an estimated 1,200 people had been detained. B’Tselem reported that lawyers and family members had been unable to reach the detainees, whose locations had not been disclosed. The facilities described as temporary were being reinforced.
Day Two — The Ambush
At 6:14 a.m. on 23 March 2028, Palestinian fighters attacked the IDF cordon outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre from three directions simultaneously. Two minutes later, a second group hit the cordon outside the Al-Aqsa compound’s northern gate — the same gate where Yousef Haddad had stood the day before. The operations lasted approximately eleven minutes each. The fighters withdrew into the Old City’s alleys before reinforcements arrived. Nineteen Palestinians were killed in the response.
A statement circulated on encrypted channels under the name Katāʾib al-Quds — the Jerusalem Brigades, a name with no prior organisational history — described the operations as “the opening of the military phase of the Jerusalem Intifada” and stated they would continue “until the holy sites are returned to the faithful and the prisoners are freed.” The statement named Yousef Haddad and his father. It said the flag had not fallen.
Escalation
By late afternoon on 23 March, Hamas announced it was opening a new front in Gaza. Hezbollah announced active operations along the northern Israeli border. Israel was now engaged on three fronts simultaneously: Jerusalem, Gaza, and the north. Iran issued a statement of condemnation but no military action. Jordan condemned the violence and called for international intervention.
Significance
Analysts and residents offered divergent interpretations. Physician and Palestinian civil society leader Mustafa Barghouti argued that the closure of the holy sites represented a categorical shift: “Every previous intifada was about land, about checkpoints, about prisoners, about settlements. Those are political grievances. Closing the Holy Sepulchre and Al-Aqsa is not a political grievance. It is an attack on the meaning of a place. You cannot negotiate meaning. You cannot offer a two-state solution for meaning.”
An Israeli security official described the Day Two operations as “tactically insignificant.” A Palestinian woman in the Muslim Quarter who watched from her window both days said the sound was the same as the Second Intifada but the feeling was different: “Before, we were fighting for a state. Now there is nothing left to fight for in that way. The state is gone. The land is gone. Now they have taken the church and the mosque. What is left is God. And they have closed the door to God.”
Amira Hass, writing in Haaretz two days after her photograph ran globally, said she had known Yousef Haddad slightly, described him as a man who chose his words as he chose his materials, and wrote: “I took the photograph. I do not know what it means. I know what it shows. It shows a man holding the flag of his people at the door of a holy place that has been taken from him. The rest is for other people to say.”
© Middle East Eye 2028. All rights reserved.
Related sources: Al Jazeera: Two Palestinians Killed Over Jerusalem Holy Site Closures (2027) | Israel | Palestine | United States