TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- In one of the largest-ever protests held in occupied Al-Quds, about 100,000 people demonstrated on Monday in opposition to the extremist regime’s plans to overhaul the judicial system.
The demonstration followed a dramatic speech on Sunday night by the occupying regime of Israel’s mainly ceremonial president, Isaac Herzog, in which he called for compromise and warned that the crisis had left the illegal entity “on the brink of constitutional and social collapse,” and possibly “a violent clash.”
“I feel, we all feel, that we are in the moment before a clash, even a violent clash. The gunpowder barrel is about to explode,” Herzog said.
The scale of the protest reflected deep divisions in the occupied territories over the structure of the Zionist regime’s institutions, amid growing fears that the rift could set off political violence between factions or even civil war.
Rooted in a decades-old culture war between different parts of the entity, the standoff began after Israel’s new regime — the most right-wing and religiously conservative in the entity’s history — entered office in late December and almost immediately sought to significantly reduce judicial oversight of parliament and increase the regime’s control over who gets to be a judge.
Critics say the proposals would give too much power to the extremist regime; endangering minority rights; and removing limits on prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to enact legislation that might allow him to escape punishment in his ongoing corruption trial.
The focus of the protests on Monday was a road in central Al-Quds that connects the three branches of the regime — the parliament, the supreme court and the prime minister’s headquarters.
Roughly 100,000 people had gathered there by mid-afternoon, according to Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, many of them from cities elsewhere in the occupied
territories. Israeli media reported that some protesters had traveled in a 2.5-mile long convoy of cars from northern regions.
In their comments, speeches and banners, the protesters expressed fears that the judicial proposals would turn the occupying regime of Israel into a dictatorship.
“You voted Bibi,” read one protester’s placard, using a nickname for Netanyahu. “You got Mussolini.”
Gili Bar-Hillel, a publisher and translator, drove from Tel Aviv to participate, and described the judicial overhaul as “a regime coup.”
“I can’t stand and watch and say I didn’t do anything,” said Ms. Bar-Hillel, 48. “We are not far from a situation where we won’t be allowed to protest,” she added. “It’s a slippery slope.”
The protest followed weeks of regular demonstrations in Tel Aviv, where a similar number of people have gathered every Saturday night since the start of the year. But Monday’s demonstrations were considered more impressive because they occurred during a weekday and mainly in Al-Quds, a right-wing and religious stronghold.
Inside parliament, a regime-controlled committee voted on Monday to advance part of the proposed legislation, setting the stage for a debate on the floor of parliament in the coming days — the first step toward turning the plan into law at some point in the coming months.
The vote set off a fracas in the committee room after opposition lawmakers, one of them in tears, chanted against the decision, and some of them clambered over tables to confront the committee chair, Simcha Rothman, an extremist lawmaker.
The moves came hours after the new regime announced its first plans to expand settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, giving retroactive authorization to nine settlements that were built by groups of settlers without official approval.