On Monday, protestors from both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv marched to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's residence and blocked the road opposite his home.
Protestors in Jerusalem block the road outside Netanyahu's residence with concrete blocks. Photo courtesy of Olivier Fitoussi at Haaretz.
This march to Netanyahu's residence was part of the "tent city" protests that have now spread across Israel after Saturday night's massive rally in Tel Aviv, where approximately 30,000 protestors demanded lower housing prices and called for social justice, with many protesters chanting "revolution" and "Mubarak - Assad - Netanyahu."
The rapidly growing protest movement is offering the greatest threat Netanyahu has seen to his leadership since taking office in 2009 and today forced him to cancel a European trip to deal with the growing crisis.
On Saturday night, 30,000 Israelis took to Tel Aviv's streets.
A poll conducted by Haaretz seemed to confirm Netanyahu's nervousness, as 87% of Israelis polled expressed support for the protests taking place.
Recent Developments
The protests, which have been spearheaded by Israel's young, left-leaning middle class, and which have been centered around skyrocketing housing prices, particularly rental prices in Israel's urban centers, have morphed quickly in recent days, and have been joined by a growing number of segments.
Today, as "tent" cities sprung up in cities small and large across Israel's landscape, small groups of protesters took to the streets, blocking traffic in major centers during rush hour as well as the road leading to the Knesset. From Haaretz:
Dozens of activists blocked major roads in Haifa, Jerusalem and Be’er Sheva as part of the housing crisis protests earlier Monday. In central Haifa, scuffles broke out between activists and drivers who were forced to stop. Eight activists were arrested in Paris Square in Jerusalem after refusing to clear the road.
Dozens of activists also blocked a road at the entrance to the Knesset. Five were arrested and one police officer was lightly injured.
And, perhaps more significantly, for the first time today, the young protesters were joined by an underrepresented, poor minority:
Moreover, hundreds of students and residents in Be'er Sheva were marching in protest of high housing prices, and residents of unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev also joined the demonstration.
A general doctor's strike, which has been going on for 16 weeks, today joined the general protest, with the doctor's protest leader announcing a hunger strike:
The chairman of the Israel Medical Association, Dr. Leonid Eidelman, announced that he was going on a hunger strike on Monday to protest the state of the health care system in Israel, after exhausting all efforts to reach a negotiated agreement with the Finance Ministry.
A doctors' march is set to leave the IMA offices in Ramat Gan to Jerusalem, where they plan to hand to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a petition signed by tens of thousands of citizens and doctors that support the struggle.
Meanwhile, the general protest movement has called for widespread strikes to begin on August 1, with a Facebook page established today already receiving over 4,000 confirmations.
A First for Israel - The Middle Class Rising Up
What's remarkable about this protest movement is that was started by Israel's young, middle class, and many of the leaders are the children of those currently in power in Israel.
This is in marked contrast to previous similar movements historically in Israel, in which the working poor precipitated such protests. According to Dr. Roni Kaufman, Senior lecturer at the Department of Social Work at Ben Gurion University:
In the past, the protesters consisted of the working poor, he says, but in contrast, "today it is the middle-class youth - this has never happened in Israel. This is revolutionary in a big way, for middle-class students to come out. At-risk people always knew that they were on the bottom rung of society, that they have no chance of success, unless the state helps them out," says Kaufman.
"But the fact that the middle-class students began to struggle, that they feel that there is no future within reach for them - we are talking about the mainstream of society - this has never happened in Israel. I'm in shock over it,” he says.
"All the theories that say that the middle class is in free-fall turn out to be correct," says Kaufman, pointing out the recent struggles of social workers, hospital doctors, and other professional fields. "The students see that it will happen to them in a few years, that they won't be able to support themselves. The job market in Israel has changed. It's all part-time jobs, there's no tenure," he says.
"Today, the government has stopped taking responsibility. Once, the government took a lot more responsibility for housing, for job creation. People feel like if they don't take responsibility and don't do something and don't organize and don't fight, they'll have nothing."
While the leaders of this movement are young, middle class and largely a part of the progressive left, there are signs that others with grievances are prepared to either join the protests or co-opt the momentum they have brought to raise the profile of their own grievances. Today, doctors and Bedouins were among those groups.
Many political progressives in Israel have noticed the absence of the occupation in the West Bank or the I/P conflict as being visible in the protests, with some, such as Haaretz's Gideon Levy, openly hoping that this will change:
If the struggle succeeds against the tyranny of the apartment owners and the Finance Ministry - which was what motivated them to go out and demonstrate - perhaps they will find the way of struggling also against other more severe forms of tyranny. That is the big test before the people.
A political pilot project whose importance cannot be underestimated is taking place now on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, and in other tent cities throughout the country. It is up to the Israelis to blow an empathetic, encouraging and impassioned wind into their sails. We must now leave apathy and cynicism behind at home and go out to the tents.
Regardless of which issues get subsumed in these protests, one thing remains clear: they are presenting a definite challenge to Netanyahu's rule.