Social activists returned to Rothschild Boulevard – city inspector confiscate tents

Hundreds of people descended on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard on Friday, in attempt to revive tent city as he was during last year’s wave of social protests.

The rally came after ,last week, Daphni Leef, one of the leaders of last summer’s protets, along with a number of other social activists set up a tent on the high-end Tel-Aviv boulevard. Tel Aviv municipal inspectors later took down the tent. In July 2011, Leef set up a tent on Rothschild Boulevard to protest the cost of housing in Israel. That act sparked a protest movement that swept Israel, with tent encampments sprouting up in cities throughout the country and weekly demonstrations that grew to include hundreds of thousands of people. In an attempt to revive those protests, hundreds of people, including Leef, descended on Rothschild Boulevard on Friday, placing tents, in an action echoing the tent city erected during last summer’s rallies.

 


Daphni Leef (Photo: Channel 10)

However, dozens of city inspectors arrived at the scene and dismantled the tents several times, until the activists decided to carry the tents above their heads, in order to prevent inspectors from reaching them. Participants responded to the inspectors’ efforts by calling out slogans against right-wing Israeli government and against Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai, saying he is harming democracy. Tel Aviv Mayor Huldai, a member of the Labor Party, recently clarified that “tents will not be permitted again in the city,” and that the protesters will “not be allowed to take over the boulevard again.”