tel aviv, israel
DailyExpertNews
—
Protesters blocked the way to one of the main terminals of Israel’s central international airport on Thursday, intensifying a nationwide movement against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to weaken the country’s justice system.
A DailyExpertNews team at Ben Gurion Airport saw people walking to Terminal 3 with suitcases due to the blocked road, as scenes of what has been dubbed a “Disruption Day” emerged.
Israeli television also showed a separate protest in the city of Tel Aviv that appeared to number in the thousands, with protesters waving Israeli flags.
Demonstrators on foot blocked the Ayalon highway, one of Tel Aviv’s main thoroughfares, with some resistance from police to clear the highway, a DailyExpertNews team saw on the scene.
Protesters chanted “democracy”, “shame” and “where were you in Huwara?” to the police, a reference to a Palestinian village in the West Bank that was the target of a violent uprising by Jewish settlers nearly two weeks ago.
The demonstration brought traffic to a halt on the highway, DailyExpertNews noted, before police on horseback managed to push protesters off the highway and clear it. Protesters spread along the highway but remained in the area.
Some protesters handed out roses to police or placed them on police cars, TV footage showed. As with previous protests, many protesters carried Israeli flags, while some Pride flags were also displayed.
DailyExpertNews watched as protesters tried to block a truck with a water cannon pointed at them.
Opponents of government plans to give Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, the power to overturn Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority have been protesting every Saturday night across Israel for the past nine weeks. The largest protests, in Tel Aviv, have regularly drawn more than 100,000 demonstrators, in a country of just over nine million people.
The legislative package would also give the government the power to appoint judges, which currently rests with a committee made up of judges, lawyers and politicians. It would take away the power and independence of the ministries’ legal advisers, and take away the power of the courts to invalidate government appointments.
Proponents of the plan to overhaul the judiciary say the changes are necessary to rein in a Supreme Court that has become too powerful and not democratically accountable.
The protest at Ben Gurion Airport came hours before Netanyahu flew to Rome to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
It also took place on the day US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and Defense Secretary Yoav Gallant. Austin was originally scheduled to come to Israel on Wednesday but delayed his arrival by a day at the request of Israeli officials concerned about the protests, the Pentagon said Wednesday. The location of his meeting was also changed because of the protests, Pentagon press secretary Brig. General Pat Ryde said.
Austin will bring up Israeli violence in the West Bank during his brief stay in Israel as part of a broader trip to the Middle East, a senior US defense official told reporters who traveled with the secretary before his arrival in Israel.
He will share “his deep and profound concern about activities contributing to a cycle of violence in the West Bank,” the official said in a background briefing. “By spending so much time focusing on violence in the West Bank, it detracts from our ability to focus on what the strategic threat is right now, which is Iran, dangerous nuclear advances and continued regional and global aggression. .”
Undercover Israeli Border Police agents killed three suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank on Thursday morning, just hours before Austin landed, the Border Police announced. Israeli security forces came under fire from a vehicle during an operation to apprehend two suspected Palestinian Islamic Jihad military operatives, returned fire and killed all three people in the vehicle, the police statement said.
The widespread demonstrations across Israel on Thursday are unrelated to Austin’s visit.
