Israelis Flood Tel Aviv for Reforms Protest

Almost a quarter of a million Israelis rallied in central Tel Aviv on Saturday, police said, for a mass protest aimed at pushing the government into reforms to ease the cost of living.

The organizers appeared to have achieved their target of drawing a "critical mass" out onto the streets to underline the staying power of a movement which began in mid-July over housing costs.

It was the biggest demonstration for a social cause in the history of the state of Israel, which has a population of 7.7 million.

"The people demand social justice" and "the people against the government," chanted the demonstrators, carrying Israeli flags as well as some red flags of the labor movement.

"This is Egypt," a banner read, referring to the Arab spring of anti-government revolts.

The movement has mushroomed into a full-blown social uprising calling for across-the-board reforms to ease the cost of living and reduce Israel's income disparity.

The Tel Aviv demonstration, authorized by police, began at around 1800 GMT from a tent camp and the protesters headed toward the defense ministry and other government buildings.

In Jerusalem, thousands more protesters gathered in the city centre for a another march that was to take them to the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld estimated the numbers in Tel Aviv at more than 200,000 and another 30,000 in Jerusalem, revising earlier figures as the crowds converged.

"We're hoping to reach a critical mass of more than 200,000 protesters to force the government to radically change social policy," Hadas Kushlevitch, a representative of the protest movement, told AFP on Friday.

Netanyahu appears to have been caught off-guard by the protests, which drew 100,000 people into the streets in cities across Israel on July 30.

His government has so far shied away from the sort of sweeping reforms that protesters are calling for, with Netanyahu explicitly warning against costly measures that he says could plunge Israel into a financial crisis.

The Israeli media has also largely thrown its support behind the movement, with commentators flaying Netanyahu for his decision to submit protesters' claims to a committee and push through controversial housing legislation.

The laws, passed this week before the Knesset broke for a summer recess, streamline the building process for contractors, which Netanyahu said would flood the market with housing and bring down prices.

But social and environmental activists say it will simply allow the construction of more luxury housing and could be abused by contractors who want to build without meeting environmental regulations.

Uri Metuki, a protest leader, makes no secret of the fact that he expects "the battle will be long."

"We are trying to change nothing more and nothing less than a whole system that privileges the interests of the individual to the detriment of the collective interest," he said.

But he does not see the movement running out of steam anytime soon.

"The movement has the support of a very large part of the population, which is not ready to renounce its demands," he says, accusing Netanyahu of acting "cynically ... in the hope that the movement will lose support."

The burgeoning movement sparked off over housing prices, when a handful of young activists set up a tent city in one of Tel Aviv's trendiest neighborhoods to publicize their inability to afford homes.

It has tapped into deep frustration over what Israelis say is a growing gap between rich and poor and a general decline in social services that the state once provided.

The protesters have seen a new infusion of support from the Histadrut labour union, with several thousand members of the organization joining demonstrators in Tel Aviv on Thursday.

The top-selling Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Friday questioned why Netanyahu had taken so long to act. "If the protests are justified as Netanyahu says ... then why did he not come to this realizatio before they were triggered?"