Police have informed anti-government protesters they will not be allowed to hold their regular Saturday night protest on the intersection of Kaplan Street and Begin Road in Tel Aviv, Hebrew media outlets reported on Thursday.
The spot was meant to host, this coming Saturday, its first rally since the Israel Defense Forces removed limitations on gatherings in central Israel in light of the ceasefire in Lebanon. Activists plan to focus on new bills being advanced by the government that they say represent a return of efforts for “a regime coup.”
However, police asserted that recent rallies have been too small to justify blocking the key intersection, and are demanding that the protest be relocated a few meters away from the junction, near IDF Headquarters’ Begin Gate.
“We note that a request was submitted to hold a protest with the participation of 50,000 protesters. However, the experience of the past weeks shows that in reality, a significantly smaller amount arrived than what the organizers had presented,” police said in a statement in response to the reports, as quoted by Hebrew media outlets.
Police said it made the decision to balance the right to protest with the need to limit the impact on routine life. They said they will reassess the matter if there is a large number of attendants at the protest.
Organizers have said the reason for the smaller turnout was the Home Front Command limitations, and have vowed to fight the decision.
Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan, speaks to the crowd at Begin Gate Bridge in Tel Aviv during a rally demanding the government sign a deal to return the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, August 24, 2024. (Hostages and Missing Families Forum/Roi Boshi)
“The police have not learned a thing — when it tries to harm the right to protest of the Israeli public, it only justifies our struggle. Israel won’t be a dictatorship, and the police will not be a political militia for the minister,” organizers wrote on X, referencing National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
It said the protest would be held at Kaplan at 6:30 p.m.
Ben Gvir has been accused by critics of illegitimately interfering in police operations regarding anti-government protests, closely involving himself in policing the demonstrations in an attempt to repress them and pressuring police to use tougher methods of crowd dispersal.
MK Naama Lazimi of the left-wing Democrats party also said that the police was acting under the orders of Ben Gvir to oppress the protest movement.
“Instead of doing their work to fight serious crime on the streets, they are busy persecuting protesters to please nefarious political interests. It won’t work for them — the protest will only get stronger,” she said.
MK Gilad Kariv, also from the Democrats, said the police’s reasoning was just an excuse, as protesters were simply respecting IDF Home Front Command rules by not showing up in the masses.
“Next Saturday, the public will show the police and the minister in charge of it that it is not a handful, but the masses,” he said.
File: Labor MK Naama Lazimi and former MK Gabi Lasky help protesters amid clashes with police in Tel Aviv following a rally for a hostage deal and against the government, August 31, 2024. (Marcelo Sznaidman/Pro-Democracy Protest Movement)
Weekly protests over the past year have focused on pressuring the government to do more to reach a deal to free hostages held by Hamas since its October 7 massacre. It is believed that 96 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
The focus of protests on new bills advanced by the government comes as members of Netanyahu’s coalition increasingly call for the sacking of the attorney general and to resume the government’s judicial overhaul program aimed at curbing the power of the High Court of Justice.
The overhaul legislation sparked mass, weekly protests throughout 2023, up until Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
Furthermore, opposition activists and lawmakers have criticized recent legislative initiatives to grant the government oversight over television ratings data and privatize the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation and Army Radio, saying that they are aimed at eroding press freedoms.
Critics, including the Foreign Press Association and the Union of Journalists in Israel, have accused the government of undermining democracy, while the bills’ backers argue that their legislation would liberalize the media market and increase competition.
