Hundreds of Israelis protest against Iran war, clash with police

Hundreds gathered in Tel Aviv and some other Israeli cities on Saturday to protest the war in the Middle East, in unauthorised demonstrations that security forces sought to disperse.

Weekly protests against the war launched by Israel and the United States against Iran on February 28 have been taking place in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, initially drawing only a few dozen participants.

Numbers now appear to be rising, though they are far from the tens of thousands who filled the streets last year to protest the war in Gaza.

A number of former parliamentarians and prominent left‑wing organisations joined Saturday’s rallies, including Standing Together, Peace Now and Women Wage Peace.

AFP footage showed law enforcement officers removing demonstrators in Tel Aviv. Similar scenes were filmed by activists in the northern city of Haifa.

Under wartime security guidelines, gatherings of more than 50 people are prohibited in Israel, as the country faces daily barrages of missiles and rockets from Iran and Lebanon.

A spokesperson for one of the organising groups told AFP that the protests had not been authorised.

In Tel Aviv, AFP journalists reported that security forces pushed back some demonstrators forcefully, knocking several to the ground while at least one protester was held in a chokehold.

The Israeli police said the “illegal demonstration” was dispersed after a Home Front Command representative clarified that such a gathering was prohibited under emergency regulations.

Police said 13 people were arrested in the city.

Another five were detained in Haifa, where “rioters began blocking the road and did not comply with the officers’ instructions”, police said.

Organisers from the Jewish-Arab activist group Standing Together said in a statement that police had been “instructed to carry out arrests and silence dissent”, adding that “the government fears the expansion of the protest movement”.

“We are four weeks into the war, and nobody actually knows what is the aim,” said Yoram, a 52-year old tour guide who declined to give his last name, at the beginning of the Tel Aviv rally.

“No one’s thought how the hell we’re going to get out of it, and there’s no end in sight,” said Joanne Levine, 76, adding that in her view the war was part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “game plan”.

Public support for the war against Iran remains high in Israel. A poll published Friday by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 78 percent of Jewish Israelis back the war — compared to just 19 percent among the Arab Israeli minority.

However, the share of those opposed has grown from four percent in early March to 11.5 percent now, the institute found.