Thousands of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv, West Jerusalem and Haifa against the sixth government of Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing their opposition to its plan to change the judicial system and the law.
The demonstrators waved Israeli flags and chanted slogans that consider changing the judicial system a coup against democracy. They also demanded the resignation of the prime minister due to his prosecution in corruption cases.
The demonstrators, who belong to left-wing movements and parties and are in the midst of the partisan political map, fear that the new ruling combination will overturn the judicial system, and that it seeks to end Israel as a democratic state according to their slogans.
The organizers of these demonstrations had refused the participation of former Prime Minister Yair Lapid and former Defense Minister Benny Gantz in these protests.
extremist and militant
The ruling coalition includes right-wing and far-right parties, as well as other extremist religious parties, which the demonstrators fear are anti-democratic, according to what the French Press Agency says.
The demonstrators gathered at the invitation of an anti-corruption organization, and chanted slogans calling for "saving democracy" and preventing the "overthrow of the political system" in force in Israel since its establishment in 1948 on the land of Palestine.
The center and left parties and the Alliance of the Front and the Arab League for Change - formed by two Arab Israeli parties - also called for demonstrations, especially against the judicial reform project presented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government on January 4.
It is reported that Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, had been forced to leave power in 2021, prompted by a diverse electoral coalition that lasted less than a year.
But he returned to the premiership at the end of last December after legislative elections that took place the previous month, the fifth in 4 years, and their results reflected a division among the voters and contradictions in Israeli society, according to Agence France-Presse.