In this photo taken Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011, a woman sleeps in a protest tent encampment against the costs of living in Tel Aviv, Israel. What started out as a sprinkling of tents pitched along Tel Aviv's tony Rothschild Boulevard – named for a scion of the fabulously wealthy Jewish banking family – has swollen into the most ferocious popular outcry in decades.Oded Balilty/AP
Israel's 24-day protest for social justice is rattling the country's political establishment.
The growing campaign that has seen tent cities erected in several parts of the country, massive demonstrations on each of the past three weekends and rallies planned for 11 centres on Saturday night is operating outside the bounds of conventional political parties or labour movements.
The organizers have risen largely from student ranks, youth movements and ad hoc committees of participants. They have shied away from any connection to political bodies –which must be driving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a consummate politician, to distraction.
Just how concerned is Mr. Netanyahu about dealing with this unfamiliar phenomenon? Concerned enough to call a week ago on Manuel Trajtenberg to head a panel of experts to report in six weeks on how best to deal with the concerns of the protesters. Mr. Trajtenberg, a socially oriented economist, resigned two years ago as chairman of the Prime Minister's council of economic advisers over differences in economic doctrine.
Concerned enough also to be willing to forgo a planned cut in the corporate-tax rate, "the jewel in the crown of Netanyahu's economic policies," as columnist Nahum Barnea described it, if it would help. And concerned enough even to be willing to freeze the country's defence budget for a year if that would make a difference.
The demands of the legion of protesters focus on a few basic points: the cost of living is too high for hard-working people to enjoy a reasonable standard of living; the cost of housing, in particular, is prohibitively expensive for most Israelis, and the benefits of the country's well-performing economy flow disproportionately to a small group of people at the high end of Israeli society.
This is a cry for relief "from the backbone of the nation," political psychologist Daniel Bar-Tal says.
In terms of sheer numbers, the month-long protest may have peaked last Saturday when about 300,000 people (in a country of 7.5 million) turned out to demonstrate in Tel Aviv. But the movement is continuing to expand in areas outside the centre of the country.
"The people in the periphery often suffer more than the people in the centre," said Bracha Ben-Avraham, 61, in a moshav outside Nahariya, just eight kilometres from the Lebanese border. "Homes may be more affordable up here, but there are no jobs," she explained.
Some have tried to dismiss the national protest as a classic phenomenon of the left. But the participants in the marches and sit-ins don't bear this out.
Ojer Nissi, 54, is a lecturer in legal studies at a private institute. All of his life he's been a follower of the late Vladimir Jabotinsky and what is considered the right-wing Betar movement. Mr. Nissi has spent the past three weeks sleeping in one of the 53 tents pitched in the middle of downtown Jerusalem.
"I believe we need to have the right to decent housing legislated into our basic law," he said. "Jabotinsky believed in such a constitutional right."
Ayelet Cohen, 23, a political science student at Hebrew University, is sensitive to suggestions made by people such as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that protesters like her are just having a good time.
"Look, it's Friday afternoon on a lovely summer day. I'd sooner be on the beach with my friends. Instead, I'm here, cleaning the kitchen and wondering what we're going to serve 300 people tomorrow."
These are the stories of middle-class Israelis who say they're mad as hell and not going to take it any more.
"We're fed up that money goes to subsidize housing in settlements in the West Bank," Ms. Ben-Avraham said. "The need is here, inside the country we have supported for so long."