Israeli police clash with protesters
‘National disruption day’ latest demonstration against plan to weaken country’s Supreme Court
Israeli police on Wednesday fired stun grenades and water cannons at demonstrators who blocked a Tel Aviv highway, while protesters scuffled with police near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence in Jerusalem as weeks of anti-government protests turned violent for the first time.
Thousands across the country staged a “national disruption day,” the latest in a string of mass protests against Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judiciary and weaken the country’s Supreme Court.
The plan has drawn heavy criticism from wide swaths of Israeli society and pleas from international allies for Netanyahu to slow down. A wave of unusually intense Israeli-Palestinian violence in the occupied West Bank has helped fuel tensions, with radical West Bank settlers rampaging through a Palestinian village earlier this week.
Netanyahu and his coalition partners, a collection of ultra-Orthodox and hard-line nationalist parties, say the plan is needed to rein in the powers of unelected judges. Critics say Netanyahu, a defendant standing trial for corruption charges, holds a personal grudge against the justice system and is pushing the country toward autocracy.
In Tel Aviv, crowds of protesters amassed outside a salon where Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, had gone to get her hair done late Wednesday. Israeli media said police were called to rescue her.
The Netanyahus have been criticized for being out of touch with regular Israelis and living a lavish lifestyle at taxpayer expense. Last week, an Israeli parliamentary committee approved new funding for Netanyahu and his family.
In a late-night address, Netanyahu criticized the anti-government protesters and attempted to compare them to the violent mob of settlers that tore through the West Bank town of Hawara this week, torching dozens of homes, businesses and cars and killing one Palestinian.
“The freedom to demonstrate is not a licence to drag the country into anarchy,” Netanyahu said. “We will not accept breaking the rules and violence, not in Hawara, not in Tel Aviv and not anywhere.”
Netanyahu made no mention of a call Wednesday by his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand West Bank settler leader, for Hawara to be “erased” by the Israeli state.
‘‘ The freedom to demonstrate is not a licence to drag the country into anarchy.
BENJAMIN N E TA N YA H U ISRAEL’S PRIME MINISTER