A Knesset committee is holding a meeting to discuss police use of water cannons, after several instances in which police have been accused of indiscriminate use of them against protesters outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem.
Internal Affairs Committee head Miki Haimovich expresses anger at the police for not sending a representative involved in the use of the water hoses, which spray a high-intensity blast of water at protesters, knocking them over.
While use of the cannons against ultra-Orthodox and others have been common for years, they have only gained attention in recent days thanks to intense media coverage of protests calling for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign.
Police use a water cannon to disperse demonstrators during a protest against Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outside his residence in Jerusalem, early Friday, July 24, 2020. (AP/Ariel Schalit)
“The pictures from the protest are not simple. The right to protest is important, even if its inconvenient for neighborhood residents or the regime,” Haimovich says according to Ynet. “We need to fix the injustices done in protests in the past and they cannot be a guide for how to act in the present.”
One protester who says he was hit in the face by a water burst says it caused him to lose consciousness. “I think they want to scare us from returning and protesting,” he says.
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