Arab lessons in Israeli protests

Not many outside Israel noticed – but it started on the Tel-Aviv cycle way on July 14th and has only got bigger ever since. The 150,000 strong protest movement that crescendoed last week across every main town and City in Israel has become a major issue for official disquiet.

Anyone I spoke to on the ground during the Arab Spring argued that it would be the Arabs in the Israel/Palestine nexus who would seize the time – changing for ever the peace dynamic. No one said ‘I say, look out for Israel’s squeezed middle – I warn you, they’ll be on the streets’. But they are, and so far they look like staying there.

The sense I have always got when visiting Israel is that many have felt the country cannot afford domestic protest, the ‘threat’ from beyond is too great.  Strangely, what for some has been an economic boom time in Israel, has persuaded many that enough is enough. The disparity between rich and poor as in so many raw capitalist economies (our own included) has grown ever wider, ever deeper. But few can boast what Reuters have reported of Israel – that a mere sixteen families control some 50% of the economy.

The issues of wider discontent are the same that you find in many parts of Western Europe and America. Shortages of affordable housing; rising long term unemployment; and government often out of touch with the basic aspirations of the people.

So far the ‘Israeli Summer’, is relatively leaderless. But dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Netanyahu and many other mainstream politicians is rising. He has just come up with an ‘affordable housing’ programme. The protesters dismiss it as too little too late.

The Arab Spring as so far frightened China; stoked rebellion in Malawi; and generated unprecedented domestic protest in Israel. How many of the world’s political leaders sleep easy in their beds these days, one wonders. This thing, this web/street based informal, un-forecastable ‘thing’ is on the move. Where next?

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