Tel Aviv, Israel
Reuters
Israeli police fired stun grenades and scuffles broke out in Tel Aviv on Wednesday during a nationwide “day of disruption,” raising the intensity of protests against a government plan to overhaul the judiciary.
In images not seen in Tel Aviv for years, police on horseback confronted demonstrators breaching barricades as traffic piled up. Live footage showed police dragging protesters off the road to shouts of “Shame” and “We are the majority and we are out on the streets.”
Israelis demonstrate as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist coalition government presses on with its contentious judicial overhaul, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on 1st March, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters/Amir Cohen
One Tel Aviv protester who appeared to have been injured by a grenade crouched down, holding his head, while an Israeli flag lay beside him on the road next to a pool of blood.
Israel Radio said police had used a water cannon to disperse demonstrators.
“I came to make sure that my kids will live in a democracy,” a protester named Avichai told Reuters. “We see what happened in Hungary and in Poland and in other countries and we are trying to save the democracy we had for 75 years.”
“I’m not happy with the direction that the government is going, I think it’s a very slippery slope in terms of the blurring between what is independent and what is political,” protester Shoshanna Silberstein told Reuters.
The judicial overhaul would give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nationalist-religious coalition decisive sway in picking judges and limit the scope of the Supreme Court to strike down legislation or rule against the executive.
Netanyahu formed a government two months ago, promising his coalition partners to overhaul the judiciary and entrench Israel’s control of the West Bank where Palestinians hope to establish an independent state.
In parliament, the Knesset’s Constitution, Justice and Law Committee gave initial approval to more proposals in the plan, in a vote boycotted by opposition lawmakers who say Israel will cease to exist as a democracy if it goes through.
“The right to protest is not the right to halt the country,” Netanyahu told a news conference. “It’s not a license to bring the country down into anarchy.”
Netanyahu compared the demonstration to a rampage by Jewish settlers this week through the Palestinian village of Huwara following a deadly Palestinian attack. Police arrested 10 suspects over the rampage in which one Palestinian was killed.
“We won’t take breaking the law not in Huwara, not in Tel Aviv and not anywhere,” Netanyahu said.
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said some demonstrators had thrown stones and that police would use all means at their disposal to stop “anarchists” from rioting and blocking roads.
The protests have been going on for weeks. The overhaul has yet to become law but it has already affected the shekel currency and drawn concern among some Western allies about the health of Israeli democracy.
“Slow down a little a bit, maybe bring people together, try and build some consensus,” US Ambassador Tom Nides said at Tel Aviv University’s conference of the Institute for National Security Studies on Tuesday.
Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges that he denies, says the changes will restore balance between the branches of government and boost business. Businesses and economists say the planned reforms could harm Israel as an investment destination.
Opinion polls have shown the plan is unpopular with most Israelis who would prefer a compromise be reached.
Warning that the country is on the brink of “constitutional and social collapse”, President Isaac Herzog is pushing for an agreed accord.
– With AMIR COHEN in Tel Aviv
ISRAELI MINISTER’S CALL TO ‘ERASE’ PALESTINIAN VILLAGE AN INCITEMENT TO VIOLENCE, US SAYS
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s call for a Palestinian village to be “erased” amounted to incitement to violence and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must publicly disavow it, the US State Department said on Wednesday.
An ultranationalist in Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, Smotrich made the comments at a conference on Wednesday amid a spate of deadly Palestinian attacks and Israeli settler violence in the occupied West Bank.
Asked about a weekend settler rampage through the Palestinian village of Huwara, which an Israeli general on Tuesday described as a “pogrom,” Smotrich said: “I think that Huwara needs to be erased”.
Smotrich added: “I think that the state of Israel needs to do it, but God forbid not individual people.”
State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters that Smotrich’s comments “were irresponsible. They were repugnant. They were disgusting.”
Price continued: “And just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence.”
Israel’s police have arrested 10 people for suspected involvement in the Huwara attack in which one Palestinian was killed. The rampage followed a Palestinian gun attack that killed two Israelis.
On Wednesday, Israeli forces killed one Palestinian and arrested six others suspected of involvement in the fatal shooting of an Israeli American in the West Bank on Monday.
After making the Huwara comments, Smotrich issued a statement saying the media had misinterpreted them, without retracting his call for the village to be erased.
“I spoke about how Huwara is a hostile village that has become a terrorist outpost” where attacks against Jews are launched daily, Smotrich said, adding it was forbidden to take the law into one’s own hands.
“I support a disproportionate response by the (Israeli military) and the security forces to every act of terrorism,” including the “deportation of the families of the terrorists,” Smotrich added.
– RAMI AYYUB, Washington DC, US/Reuters