TEL AVIV (Dispatches) -- Demonstrators crowded Tel Aviv late Saturday for another protest against prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to protect himself from prosecution, despite the process being put on hold.
Organizers said around 258,000 people attended, but authorities gave no figures of their own.
The demonstration came a day after a car-ramming attack on the city’s seafront killed one and injured seven others.
Tensions have surged since Zionist forces stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque in Al-Quds on Wednesday. The occupying regime bombarded both Gaza and Lebanon after rockets were fired by Palestinian resistance fighters in retaliation.
Protesters on Saturday brandished signs reading “Netanyahu is leading us to war”.
Other, smaller, demonstrations took place in the central city of Kfar Saba, at Haifa in the north and in Al-Quds.
Thousands of protesters, sometimes hundreds of thousands, have been taking to the streets each week since the controversial plans were announced in January by Netanyahu’s cabinet, which was formed in December.
On March 27, he announced a “pause” to allow for dialogue on the changes which were moving through parliament and split the entity.
Netanyahu last month had announced the firing of his war minister, Yoav Gallant, who cited a threat to the entity’s security because “the growing social rift” had made its way into the army and security agencies.
The proposals would curtail the authority of the supreme court and give politicians greater powers over the selection of judges.
Opponents have raised fears of a plunge into a totalitarian system but the regime, a coalition between Netanyahu’s Likud party and extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies, argues the changes are needed to rebalance powers between lawmakers and the judiciary.
Israel’s attorney general had warned Netanyahu, just prior to the pause, against any intervention in changes to the judicial system because of conflicts of interest. The prime minister is on trial over charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, which he denies.
The Zionist regime on Sunday rejected claims raised in documents allegedly leaked from the Pentagon that leaders of its foreign intelligence service Mossad had supported the protests.
The New York Times on Saturday published an assessment it attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1 that Mossad leadership had encouraged its staff and settlers to join the mass protests. The paper said that while the leaked documents seemed authentic, it did not mean they were accurate.
Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that the report was “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever”.
“The Mossad and its senior officials did not – and do not – encourage agency personnel to join political demonstrations or any political activity,” it said.
After weeks of intensifying demonstrations, Netanyahu in late March relented and said he would delay the contested changes to allow for compromise talks with opposition parties.
The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday it was in touch with the Pentagon and had begun a probe into the leak of the alleged documents, covering several subjects relating to national security. It declined further comment.