Almost 500,000 demonstrators marched yesterday evening in 20 Israeli cities, for what the organizers had called "the March of a million". A massive protest despite the numeric target has been missed. The largest parade took place in Tel Aviv. More than 300,000 have covered the streets of the city centre until piazza Kikar Hamedina. In Jerusalem, in the tens of thousands gathered under the Windows of the Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu.
The protest was born in July from a post on Facebook of Daphni Leef, 25-year-old student cinema. The Leef, exasperated by the cost of rent in Tel Aviv, calling on all to take a tent and a place in the town centre. The first tents, I check the 14 July (hence the name of the movement J14, July 14), Bouleverd Rothschild, one of the commercial arteries of the city. With weeks, the protest grew, giving birth to a score of spontaneous camps in several Israeli cities.
The first national demonstration was held on 23 July and participated in 30 thousand, become ten times more in the March of the following Saturday and closed on 6 August. With the growing numbers have changed the demands of the protesters: If at first you were mobilized emergency houses, now calling for social justice.
Israel, from the demographic point of view, is a young country. Has a high birth rate, also due to the Palestinian Arab minority, about 20 percent of the population. To protest are largely middle class young people, students and workers, with a good level of education, the society that inhabits the uncertainty of the future, sure that will not have the economic ability of past generations. University associations have cut movement has an important role, in particular the National Student Union (Student Union). Its President Itzik Shmuli, 31 years, last night from the stage of the rally in Tel Aviv said: "this square is full of new Israelis, who are ready to die for their country, but it is up to you, Mr Prime Minister, let us live in this country."
The Netanyahu Government already tried in the last days of July to give a response to the demands of the protesters. The premier, in the aftermath of the first major manifestation of the square, has cancelled a trip diplomat in Poland to meet with protest leaders. Netanyahu's proposal was a regulation, which allows the reduction of bureaucracy for the construction of new housing. This however is not enough for young Israelis calling for broader social policies and not another liberal opening. The Israeli economy has not been too affected by the global crisis: unemployment is around 6 percent, and the growth rate is among the highest in the West. These factors are not sufficient to ensure that the middle class, in a country where the gap between rich and poor is accentuated, adequate access to basic services: home, health and education.
The movement's spokesman reiterated since July aspiration political protests, always trying to separate the occupation of the Palestinian territories, policies needed to quell the protests. Some of the protesters but stressed that Israel spends in the 7% of its Gdp, which are added each year, 3 billion dollars in US military aid. September is announced as a hot month: diplomatic relations nearly stopped with the Turkey, major tensions with Egypt and the September 20 vote at the United Nations for the recognition of a Palestinian State. This international situation could disregard new increases military expenditure, subtracting those funds social spending that the square asks for weeks.
Cosimo Caridi
No comments:
Post a Comment