(Tel-Aviv) Thousands of Israelis demonstrated on Saturday evening in Tel-Aviv and other Israeli cities for the 23e consecutive week, against the controversial reform project of the judicial system of the government of Binyamin Netanyahu.
Crowds gathered in central Tel Aviv and further protests took place in the cities of Haifa and Rehovot.
“We are being held hostage,” said Michal Gat, 47, who works in the high-tech sector, in Tel Aviv. “Our country, its economy, human rights are being confiscated by extreme people,” she lamented.
“We have been here for 23 weeks with our children, rain or shine. It is super important for the Israeli people to preserve democracy in Israel,” she told AFP.
A number of protesters also held up signs criticizing the government’s inaction in the face of a crime wave currently hitting the country’s Arab minority.
‘We won’t let Ben-Gvir get away with murder in Arab society,’ reads one, a reference to Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. .
On Thursday, five of them were shot dead at a car wash in Yafia, an Arab town west of Nazareth, possibly in connection with a gang war, according to Israeli police.
Since the start of the year, nearly 100 people have been killed in violence linked to crime among Israel’s Arab minority, according to various Arab rights NGOs.
According to the government, one of the most right-wing in the history of Israel, the reform of the judicial system aims, among other things, to rebalance powers by reducing the prerogatives of the Supreme Court, which the executive considers politicized, in favor of the Parliament.
But its detractors believe that it risks opening the way to an illiberal or authoritarian drift.
The President of the State of Israel Isaac Herzog has been negotiating for a month with representatives of the government and the opposition in order to reach a compromise on the terms of this reform.