TEL AVIV (Dispatches) — Weeks of anti-regime protests in Occupied Palestine turned violent on Wednesday for the first time as police fired stun grenades and a water cannon at demonstrators who blocked a Tel Aviv highway. The crackdown came shortly after the occupying regime of Israel’s hardline security minister urged a tough response to what he said were “anarchists.”
The violence came as thousands across the occupied territories launched a “disruption day” against the regime’s plan to overhaul Israel’s judicial system.
Critics, including influential business leaders and former military figures, say prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pushing the illegal entity toward authoritarian rule and has a clear conflict of interest in targeting judges as he stands trial on corruption charges.
The regime is barreling ahead with the legal changes and a parliamentary committee is moving forward on a bill that would weaken the supreme court.
The crisis has sent shock waves through the occupied territories and presented Netanyahu with a serious challenge, just two months after returning to power. A wave of Israeli-Palestinian clashes in the occupied West Bank has compounded his troubles.
The rival sides are digging in, deepening one of Israel’s worst domestic crises. Netanyahu and his regime, made up of extremists, have branded the protesters anarchists, while stopping short of condemning a West Bank settler mob that torched a Palestinian village earlier this week.
The legal overhaul has sparked an unprecedented uproar, with weeks of mass protests, criticism from legal experts and rare demonstrations by army reservists who have pledged to disobey orders under what they say will be a dictatorship after the overhaul passes. Business leaders, the illegal entity’s tech sector and leading economists have warned of economic turmoil under the judicial changes. The Zionist regime’s allies have expressed concern.
In the first scenes of unrest since the protests began two months ago, police arrived on horseback in the center of the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv, hurled stun grenades and used a water cannon against thousands of protesters who chanted “police state.” A video posted on social media showed a police officer pinning down a protester with his knee on the man’s neck and another showed a man who reportedly had his ear ripped off by a stun grenade.
Facing the police, protesters also chanted “where were you,” a reference to the absence of security forces during the settler attack on the Palestinian village of Hawara, which took hours to quell and which the military said it was not prepared for.

Police said protesters threw rocks and water bottles at police. Several protesters were arrested and Israeli media said at least six protesters were wounded. Earlier Wednesday, protesters blocked Tel Aviv’s main freeway and the highway connecting the city to Al-Quds, halting rush hour traffic for about an hour. At busy train stations in Tel Aviv, protesters prevented trains from departing by blocking their doors.
Security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist accused of politicizing the police, has vowed to take a tough line. He called on police to prevent the road blockages, labeling the demonstrators “anarchists.” Netanyahu said Ben-Gvir had his full support.
Thousands of protesters came out in locations across the occupied territories. Parents marched with their children, tech workers walked out of work to demonstrate and doctors in scrubs protested outside hospitals. The main rallies were expected later Wednesday outside the Knesset, or parliament, and near Netanyahu’s official residence in Al-Quds.
The Knesset also is set to cast a preliminary vote Wednesday on a separate proposal to protect Netanyahu from being removed from his post, a move that comes following calls to the entity’s attorney general to declare him “unfit for office.”
Netanyahu has been the center of a years-long political crisis in Israel, with former allies turning on him and refusing to sit with him in cabinet because of his corruption charges. That political turmoil, with five elections in four years, culminated in Netanyahu returning to power late last year, with ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties as partners in the current far-right cabinet.
Wielding immense political power, those allies secured top portfolios in Netanyahu’s cabinet, among them Ben-Gvir, who before entering politics was arrested dozens of times and was once convicted of incitement to violence and support for a terror group. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand West Bank settler leader, has been given authority over parts of the territory.
They have promised to take a tough stance against Palestinians, which has ratcheted up tensions in recent weeks. Smotrich publicly called for a harsh response to the retaliatory killing of two Zionists in the West Bank by a Palestinian, saying Israel should “go crazy,” shortly before Sunday’s mob violence. He also said Wednesday that Hawara, the Palestinian village that was attacked, should be “erased.”
A group of 22 legal experts on Tuesday called on the attorney general to investigate comments made by Smotrich and other pro-settler MPs for “inducing war crimes” over their public support for the violent riots.
In addition to the protests, Netanyahu’s cabinet, Israel’s most right-wing ever, is beginning to show early cracks, just two months into its tenure.

Internal Erosion

The former head of the Israeli military intelligence division Amos Yadlin said the occupying regime of Israel is eroding internally.
In an interview with the Channel 12 of the regime, Yadlin said, “Israel is heading to a bad place.”
Yadlin criticized politicians and the regime for encouraging divisions instead of preoccupying themselves with Iran and Hezbollah.
“We are lighting fires here, in addition to the danger of Palestinian operations, which we must stop.”
Major General in the Israeli forces’ reserves, Eyal Ben Reuven, commented on resistance operations in Occupied Palestine, saying, “What we are witnessing is tragedy after tragedy.”