Police arrest 9 in Tel Aviv for blocking road during left-wing ‘rage protest’ against settler violence

Police arrest nine people at a left-wing demonstration against settler violence on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Road, after some protesters blocked the road and disrupted traffic, according to a police statement and video published by both police and activists on the scene.

The footage shows nine youths standing on the east-bound road at the intersection with Da Vinci Street and unfurling a banner adorned with a large X that reads, in Hebrew, “Israel, not a democracy, apartheid.”

כ־200 מפגינות ומפגינים יצאו היום להפגין נגד הכיבוש ונגד טרור המתנחלים.

נראה שגם המשטרה קצת התגעגעה. אחרי תקופה ארוכה שבה ייבשנו אותם, בטח כבר היה חסר להם קצת להפגין שרירים מול מי שמוחה. הפעם זה נגמר אחרת – וטוב שכך.

כמו תמיד, נמשיך להגיע. לא כדי להתעמת, אלא כדי להתעקש על קול… pic.twitter.com/Sh2vR2O37C

— אימהות נגד אלימות ???? Mothers against violence (@imahot4) July 25, 2026

Over a dozen police and border police officers rush the youths, who fall to the road and hold onto the banner as the officers pull it away and then haul them off. Other protesters close in, chanting “officer, officer, whom are you protecting,” and are pushed back onto the sidewalk.

The demonstration “took place without approval and was not coordinated with police,” the statement says.

While small far-left demonstrations frequently take place on a grassy area near the Kaplan-Da Vinci interchange, tonight’s protest did not appear on a police list of approved marches.

The Arab-majority communist party Hadash and other groups had on Friday announced it would hold “rage protests” tonight in Haifa and at the Kaplan interchange against “settler terrorism,” after four Palestinians and two Israelis were killed in a shoot-out that erupted after armed settlers illegally entered the area of a Palestinian village in the northern West Bank.

Speaking at a separate anti-government rally at Habima Square this evening, Gal Goren, whose parents Maya and Avner were killed in the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, accuses the government of purposely fomenting chaos and violence.

“The needless death in the village of Tell expresses the deliberate chaos more than anything: the lives of Israelis and Palestinians keep being taken in a cruel game that we’re being kept in by design,” says Goren. “This state refuses to take heed and responsibility.”