More than 100,000 Israelis converged on central Tel Aviv on Saturday for a massive protest aimed at pushing the government into reforms to ease living costs by drawing a "critical mass" out onto the streets. The event was seen as a test of the appeal and staying power of a movement that began in mid-July over housing costs.
"The people demand social justice" and "the people against the government," chanted the demonstrators, carrying Israeli flags as well as some red flags of the labour movement. "This is Egypt," a banner read, in reference to the Arab spring of anti-government revolts.
The movement has mushroomed into a full-blown social uprising calling for across-the-board reforms to ease the cost of living and reduce Israel's income disparity. The Tel Aviv demonstration, authorised by police, began at around 1800 GMT from a tent camp and the protesters headed toward the defence ministry and other government buildings.
In Jerusalem, thousands more protesters gathered in the city centre for a another march that was to take them to the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld estimated the numbers in Tel Aviv at around 100,000 and another 10,000 in Jerusalem. "We're hoping to reach a critical mass of more than 200,000 protesters to force the government to radically change social policy," Hadas Kushlevitch, a representative of the protest movement, told AFP on Friday.
Netanyahu appears to have been caught off-guard by the protests, which drew 100,000 people into the streets in cities across Israel on July 30. His government has so far shied away from the sort of sweeping reforms that protesters are calling for, with Netanyahu explicitly warning against costly measures that he says could plunge Israel into a financial crisis. The Israeli media has also largely thrown its support behind the movement, with commentators flaying Netanyahu for his decision to submit protesters' claims to a committee and push through controversial housing legislation.
The laws, passed this week before the Knesset broke for a summer recess, streamline the building process for contractors, which Netanyahu said would flood the market with housing and bring down prices. But social and environmental activists say it will simply allow the construction of more luxury housing and could be abused by contractors who want to build without meeting environmental regulations.
Uri Metuki, a protest leader, makes no secret of the fact that he expects "the battle will be long." "We are trying to change nothing more and nothing less than a whole system that privileges the interests of the individual to the detriment of the collective interest," he said. "The movement has the support of a very large part of the population, which is not ready to renounce its demands," he says, accusing Netanyahu of acting "cynically ... in the hope that the movement will lose support."
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