Arrests as protesters try to storm Tel Aviv city hall

Police said they arrested 30 demonstrators who attempted to break into Tel Aviv city hall yesterday in protest against the clearing of a protest camp in the Israeli city.

Police spokesman Luba Samri said several hundred demonstrators convened outside city hall, chanting slogans and hurling raw eggs and other projectiles.

Police sought to bar entry to the building, while demonstrators attempted to block adjacent streets in response to the evacuation of the tent city set up in protest at the high cost of living.

Protest leaders had said they planned to dismantle the six-week-old encampment after bringing record numbers of demonstrators to a Saturday protest over the high cost of everything from housing to food.

The Tel Aviv municipality said it had begun clearing the tents only after the announced evacuation plans.

“Following the announcement of the social movement leadership regarding the end of the tent-stage of their protest, and continuing the evacuation of 600 tents in the city by the protesters, the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality cleaned Rothschild, Ben Gurion and Nordau boulevards of empty tents that were a sanitary risk,” it said.

An estimated 450,000 people took to Israel’s streets to protest the high cost of living on Saturday night, piling pressure on the government to take action and prompting the movement to say it would now look to other means to advance its agenda.

Meanwhile Israeli settlers plan to march on Palestinian cities if the Palestinians hold protest marches around West Bank settlements during their UN membership bid this month, settler leaders said earlier yesterday.

“We will leave our communities and march peacefully towards Palestinian towns – Hebron, Ramallah or Nablus,” said Yaakov Katz, a far-right member of the Israeli Parliament.

He made the comments at a meeting at the Israeli parliament attended by dozens of settlers who gathered to “prepare the ground for the month of September.”

The Palestinians are expected to go to the UN later this month to seek membership for a Palestinian state on the lines that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, encompassing both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including annexed Arab east Jerusalem.

The bid is firmly opposed by Israel, which accuses the Palestinians of taking unilateral action instead of engaging in negotiations.

The meeting yesterday was intended to “transform the (Palestinian) threat into an opportunity to change the rules of the game” in the West Bank, organisers said.

“It is time to declare that we are here and for eternity,” said Michael Ben Ari, the right-wing MP who organised the event.

“We will leave our houses, women, children and the elderly, to respond on the ground to the marches that the Arabs want to organise,” he added in a statement circulated at the gathering.

The Palestinians have called on their citizens to launch peaceful mass demonstrations on September 20, when Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas is expected to present the membership bid to the United Nations.