Across Israel’s major cities, a new sort of protest.

On Saturday night, demonstrators from across Israel flooded the streets of many major cities, in a wave of popular protest not seen in Israel for years. The simultaneously-organized marches saw over 50,000 take to the streets of Tel Aviv, according to organizers, while crowds of 8,000 and 10,000 turned out in Haifa and Jerusalem respectively.

The protests are part of a two week streak of popular unrest, referred to as the Israeli Summer, or by it’s more tongue-in cheek name: the Tent-and-stroller intifada. Even before Saturday’s mass demonstrations, commentators were calling the unrest the biggest crisis of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government, and indeed, the past week has been filled with politicians in frantic consultation, and emergency sessions of Israel’s parliament – the Knesset – to discuss the concerns of the ever-growing number of discontents. In fact, the demonstrations seem to have shaken the Israeli political establishment, with politicians who once flouted their social credentials studiously avoiding the demonstrators, and purportedly sneaking in the back door of upscale restaurants, so as not to be seen by their disgruntled electorate.

But what are the protests about exactly? At first glance the protestors – largely drawn from Israel’s middle class – are rallying against the high cost of rent. In Tel Aviv, rent takes up over 50% of the average income, and similar figures are mentioned for Jerusalem, so it’s understandable to see why even Israel’s middle class may feel like they’re struggling to make it through the month.

But look a little further and the picture starts to get a bit more confusing. While it’s true that tent cities protesting the high cost of living have been turning heads in parks and other public places in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem for two weeks now, the outpouring of popular discontent seems to be about something more.

Ask people what brought about protests on this scale, and you get some strange answers. “Well first it was the cottage cheese,” I’m told, “and then the doctors and social workers, and now this”. It turns out that, not too long ago, a facebook driven boycott of cottage cheese successfully pressured companies to lower prices, which had skyrocketed over the past year. Soon after, Israeli doctors went on strike to protest the long number of continuous hours they were being made to work under current legislation, while demonstrators rallied behind social workers’ demands for an increase in pay.

Beyond these issues, the demonstrators seem to share a general sense that the cost of living – from food to fuel to education – has risen beyond the means of ordinary, and even somewhat better-off, Israelis. In Jerusalem, protestors chanted “how can we be living in a holy city when we can’t even make it through the month?” Many protestors also seemed to draw inspiration from the protests of the Arab Spring. Another sign waving above the crowd reads ‘Tahrir square – not just in Cairo”. And indeed, many of the concerns expressed by the Israeli protestors over the untenable cost of living were central to the protests that spread across the Arab world this year. But in contrast to the cases of the Arab Spring protests, Israeli is a fairly liberal democracy and many in the crowd voted for Benjamin Netanyahu, the man they are currently blaming for their problems.

But the movement isn’t about rallying behind another party or leader. In fact, not only do the demonstrators cover a wide spectrum of political perspectives and come from a diverse range of backgrounds, but many consider themselves the sort who never get involved in politics. Yotam is a 29 year old graphics designer, who decided he was sick of working a full time job, and doing substantial freelance work on the side, only to not be able to make the rent, month after month. Yotam is not unusual – up to 55% of Israeli citizens hold a negative bank balance. Frustrated, Yotam, who never considered him self politically involved, met up with friends from Tel Aviv who were organizing the tent city there, and decided to try the same in Jerusalem. All it took was facebook and a bit of media coverage, and before long he was joined by thousands sharing his unease with the current state of affairs.

Leo, a young, religious demonstrator perhaps puts it best. He told me that while the demonstrators share no distinct goals or uniting political opinions, they have one thing in common.  Security issues, he said, typically dominate Israeli elections. But Netanyahu was elected primarily for his hard-line stance on security, terrorism and foreign affairs. But part of his success on the security front has been through encouraging the growth of Israel’s private security and defenses sector, which has been part of a wider policy of encouraging competition and privatization. After three years in office, Netanyahu’s economic approach has left Israel with a strong looking economy, but a populace that is feeling increasingly distant from the purported economic prosperity. For Leo then, the demonstrations are fundamentally about moving away from the tendency in Israeli politics to look at one issue at a time. “For us,” he says, “this protest is an education”.

 

(Originally composed Sunday July 31st)