March 4 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Some 300,000 people have seconded this Saturday the call for a new demonstration, the ninth in as many weeks, to express their rejection of the proposal for judicial reform that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is processing.
Police have declared the protest an “illegal demonstration” in HaShalom after about 200 protesters broke through police barriers and started a fire to block the Ayalon highway.
Protesters initially gathered in the late afternoon at places like Tel Aviv’s Goma junction. Among the first 1,500 attendees there was a group of women dressed in the red dress from the dystopian book ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, reports the newspaper ‘Yedioth Aharonoth’.
In Rehovot, a giant copy of Israel’s Declaration of Independence has been hung from a building and protesters have been able to stamp their signature on the lower part as a form of denunciation against the judicial reform initiative. In other parts of Tel Aviv, Israeli flags and banners against Netanyahu and his proposal have abounded.
Police controls have also been overcome on the Ayalon highway, where protesters have tried to block traffic. The Police have used cavalry and water cannons to disperse the protest. So far there is news of three detainees for disturbance of public order.
“We believe in this country,” opposition leader Yair Lapid said from Herzliya. “We believe that we have no future if Israel is not a strong liberal democracy. We believe in the common good and not as something that the government gives us as a gift and it is clear that it is something that the government can take away from us,” he added.
Another opposition leader, Benny Gantz, stressed that “there are people here who protect the state, who work for the state, who serve the whole of Israeli society and who come from everywhere.” “Jews, Arabs, religious and non-religious because we don’t have another country and because we don’t have another way,” he argued.
The Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, had ordered the Police on Friday to prevent the protesters from blocking traffic. Already on Saturday, Ben-Gvir has visited the Police command center and has charged against the “anarchists”.
“I have come here to apply my policy. I have no intention of apologizing to anyone, especially not to the anarchists who want to burn down Tel Aviv,” he warned.
