Hundreds of anti-government protesters converged on Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Monday, with some in the crowd scrambling with police who tried to stop them blocking access to the terminal.
The sidewalk outside the arrivals hall was filled with demonstrators carrying flags, horns and drums. A cordon of police lined the road as passenger cars and buses slowly passed by.
A video showed dozens entering the lobby and protesting there.
The protest is against a plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reform the judiciary. Earlier in the day, protesters briefly closed access to a major Israeli port.
The legislative effort, unveiled after Netanyahu regained power in late December at the head of a far-right coalition, has triggered unprecedented protests, raised concerns about Israel’s democratic health and hurt the economy.
Police have promised to keep the Ben Gurion operating and an airport authority spokesman said there had been no unusual delays to the flights.
A leaflet that circulated online urged protesters to come to Ben Gurion with suitcases and passports, suggesting they planned to pose as passengers to bypass police cordons.
Netanyahu quelled some of the protests during compromise talks with the opposition, but they proved unsuccessful. He is now pursuing a legislative package that he says is a scaled-down version of the reform.
With Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition having a comfortable parliamentary majority, critics have staged more street protests in an effort to thwart changes they see as a threat to the court’s independence.
Several protesters, some holding Israeli flags and others beating drums, blocked the gate of the northern port of Haifa for 1.5 hours. A spokesman for the port said they had stopped about 100 trucks from entering and had delayed loading cargo.
Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges he denies, defends his judiciary reforms as an attempt to restore balance between the various branches of government and correct what he and his coalition allies consider the courts to be overreaching.
(Reporting by Rami Amichay, Dan Williams, Ari Rabinovitch and Steven Scheer)
Source: CNN Brasil
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