Tens of thousands of Israelis marched for lower living costs on Saturday in what protest leaders called "a moment of truth" for a movement that has mounted pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to take on sweeping economic reform. "An entire generation wants a future," read one banner as demonstrators flooded the streets of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem, shouting "the people demand social justice."
"Tonight is the pinnacle moment of a historic protest," Amir Rochman, 30, an activist from Israel's Green Party said. The grassroots movement has swollen since July from a cluster of student tent-squatters into a diffuse, countrywide mobilisation of Israel's middle class.
"Tonight society will divide into an old type of Israeli who just accepts the way things are and a new type who will join us in pushing for change," Itzik Shmuli, head of the National Student Union and one of the protest's leaders said. The popular movement has catapulted the economy onto Israel's political agenda upstaging a diplomatic face-off with the Palestinians for UN recognition of statehood and posing the greatest challenge yet to Netanyahu, halfway into his term.
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