In a sign of a growing establishment escalating repression toward the massive social movement and leaders of the tent protest, indictments were filed in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court yesterday (Tuesday) upon recommendation of the police against two of the protest leaders in the city.

March for Social Justice, Jerusalem, Tuesday August 16 (Photo: Activestills)

The defendants − Barak Segal, 28, and Daniel Planker, 26 − were among the first to put up tents in the capital to protest the high cost of housing. The indictments relate to two incidents in particular. One involves an alleged attempt to break into the Knesset compound last Tuesday at the end of a protest march. The procession ended at the Knesset rose garden while the Knesset was debating the cost of living and the social protest.

A confrontation allegedly broke out with Knesset guards and local police in which Planker and another individual were arrested. Planker, who has been charged with assaulting a policeman, remained in detention until Sunday, when he was put under house arrest.

The second incident allegedly occurred the night before the Knesset confrontation, when − according to the charges against them − Segal and Planker supposedly burned tires outside the capital on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway, Route 1. Police allege that this demonstration stopped traffic on the road and posed a danger to vehicles on the highway.

Segal was called in for questioning by law enforcement officials and was subsequently detained, but was released on Sunday to house arrest. He and Planker were charged Tuesday with “endangering motorists on the highway.”

Planker’s lawyer, Lea Tsemel, said the defendants deny burning tires. She also asserted at a court appearance that they condemned any demonstrations of violence during the demonstrations. Segal’s lawyer, Moshe Ben-Yakar, said the indictment against his client appears to be an illegitimate effort to stifle the protest. The court ended the pair’s house arrest, but declined to drop the charges against them.

Yesterday, a special police force cleared the social protest activists who have been demonstrating in an abandoned building in Tel Aviv’s Dov Hoz Street. Three activists were arrested. Hundreds of activists and artists set up a “public culture center” in the building Sunday evening claiming the Tel Aviv Municipality had neglected it in order to build luxury apartment buildings there instead.