The police announced on Thursday that it would not authorize the anti-government demonstration at the Kaplan intersection in Tel Aviv this Saturday night, claiming that the number of participants does not justify the road closure for the event.
The demonstrations at the junction in central Tel Aviv began in 2023 to protest the Israeli government and its plan to enact a judicial reform plan. At their height, they saw turnouts of over 100,000 demonstrators each Saturday night. After the October 7th massacre, the demonstrations halted for several months but have since restarted, even though the government has not returned to its plans for the judicial reform.
In recent weeks, demonstrations were not held at the Kaplan intersection due to IDF Home Front Command guidelines which limited gatherings in central Israel to 2,000 people. Now that the restrictions have been lifted, the Kaplan protest organizers asked to renew the protests.
The police denied the request and instead allowed them to hold their protest at an alternative location near the Kirya Base's Begin Gate where family members of hostages hold regular demonstrations. It explained its decision stating that experience shows that the actual turnout is much lower than the number of participants the organizers stated in the request.
Members of the protest organizations expressed strong opposition to the decision and claimed that it was an attempt to weaken the movement since the Kaplan intersection is seen to be a symbol of the movement.
The police stated that "the request to hold the protest was approved per conditions set based on past events. We note that a request was submitted to hold a protest attended by 50 thousand protesters. However, the past weeks show that in fact, a substantially lower number of participants than that the organizers presented came. To balance between freedom of protest and minimum harm to routine life and freedom of movement, the police have allocated an alternative location to allow the protest to be held under the decided conditions and according to the actual number of participants."