From the Liveblog of
Saturday, June 15, 2024
Thousands of protesters gather in dozens of locales to demand early elections
Cnaan Lidor is The Times of Israel's Jewish World reporter
Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheba, Rehovot, Caesarea, and Ness Ziona are among the 60 locales where demonstrations, some of them attended by thousands, are being held to demand early elections.
The Saturday evening protests have been taking place in those locales for months. They are now occurring for the first time since Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity party, returned to the opposition and left the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Gantz had joined the cabinet shortly after the outbreak of war with Hamas on October 7.
This development may galvanize the protest movement against Netanyahu’s government.
In one of the earliest clashes Saturday between protesters and police, officers detain and drag away a senior citizen in Amiad junction in northern Israel after he participated in a road blockage.
Some protests, including the one in Beersheba, feature a screening of the film “Bringing Down a Dictator” about Slobodan Milosevic, the late Serbian leader who died in 2006 while being tried by a UN tribunal on 66 counts of crimes against humanity, including genocide.
Separately, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents some families of hostages seeking a temporary ceasefire with Hamas to increase the chances of retrieving their loved ones, is organizing its weekly rally on Hostages Square in Tel Aviv. Themed around Father’s Day, which is on June 21, the Forum’s rally is focused on the men and fathers in captivity, the group says.
