Thousands of Israelis demonstrated Saturday night in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities for the 23rd consecutive week against Benjamin Netanyahu's government's controversial plan to reform the judiciary.
The crowd gathered in central Tel Aviv and other demonstrations took place in the cities of Haifa and Rehovot.
"We are being held hostage," Michal Gat, 47, who works in the high-tech sector, said in Tel Aviv. "Our country, its economy, human rights are confiscated by extreme people," she said.
"We have been here for 23 weeks with our children, in the rain or in hot weather. It's super important for the Israeli people to preserve democracy in Israel," she told AFP.
The government, one of the most right-wing in Israel's history, is not backing down on its reform of the judiciary, which it says aims, among other things, to rebalance powers by reducing the prerogatives of the Supreme Court - which the executive considers politicized - in favor of parliament.
Critics say it paves the way for an illiberal or authoritarian drift.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog has been holding talks for a month with government and opposition officials to reach a compromise on the terms of the reform.
A wave of crime hits the Arab minority
A number of protesters on Saturday also held placards criticizing the government's inaction in the face of a crime wave currently hitting the country's Arab minority.
"We will not let Ben-Gvir get away with murders in Arab society," one read, referring to Israel's far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
On Thursday, five Israeli Arabs were shot dead at a car wash in Yafia, an Arab town west of Nazareth, as part of a gang war, according to Israeli police.
On Friday, thousands of Arabs demonstrated near Nazareth in northern Israel on the sidelines of the funeral of five members of the crime-ridden minority.
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The Arab minority, which considers itself discriminated against compared to the country's Jewish majority, particularly in terms of access to employment and housing, regularly complains about what it describes as the authorities' inaction in the face of the wave of violence that is undermining it.
Since the beginning of the year, about a hundred people have been killed in crime-related violence within Israel's Arab minority, according to various NGOs defending the rights of this community.
With AFP
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