Municipal workers began dismantling tent encampments in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities early Wednesday, as the nation's largest wave of social protests wound down, dpa reported.
The eight-week-long movement, symbolized by tent camps pitched on city squares, peaked on Saturday night with Israel's biggest ever protest. Over 400,000 people took to the streets country-wide to voice opposition to the high cost of living.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said sites that the city had considered to be empty of people were dismantled on Wednesday, but protestors countered that their belongings had also been removed.
"They took personal equipment, broke tents, took everything in the direction of the garbage dump, like thieves in the night," one angry protestor, from the tent encampment in Nordau Boulevard in northern Tel Aviv told Israel Army Radio.
Huldai also told Israel Army Radio that the city had decided not to issue eviction notices, but rather to ask residents to vacate own their own.
"So far we have supported and protected the protest, despite the difficulties," Huldai said. "But you need to understand that at a certain point, it's no longer possible to continue to take over a public area."
Though protests might continue, Huldai said the tent cities could not be become permanent.
He said the camps had become unsanitary, an eyesore for residents living in buildings above the tents, and drug use locales.
On Tuesday, city clerks placed a flier and a red rose on each tent, and told residents that they would have until late September to vacate. But then, on Wednesday, the municipality did an about face and cleared the tents. Tent denizens responded with anger.
According to Huldai, some protestors threw rocks at the municipality's inspectors and called them "Nazis."
Municipal authorities in Tel Aviv's neighbouring city of Holon also cleared 10 wooden shack constructions. In that incident, police arrested four protestors.
The Israeli "social justice protests" began in mid-July, when 25-year-old Daphne Leef pitched a tent on Tel Aviv's posh Rothschild Boulevard and asked Facebook friends to join her protest.
The movement grew rapidly in popularity, spreading nationwide and soon evolving into a larger protest against the country's high cost of living.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to criticisms of his free-market policies, which have been blamed in part for the cost increases, by telling his cabinet Sunday: "The government I head is committed to carrying out real changes to ease the high cost of living."
A 22-member committee, set up by Netanyahu and led by a respected economist, has met with the leaders of the social protests and is expected to make recommendations.
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