Binyamin Netanyahu is exploiting Israel’s divisions

Beersheva, a sleepy town in the Negev desert, is 100km south but a world away from Tel Aviv. Last year two-thirds of the town voted for parties of the far-right and religious coalition led by Binyamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, now the prime minister. Yet on March 11th some 10,000 Beershevans felt angry enough to protest against the government’s plans to weaken Israel’s Supreme Court. “This is a Bibi-ist town,” says Zipi Stolero, a retired civil servant who has lived there for 65 years. “But people are marching because they feel…freedom is at risk.” That the demonstrations have spread to Beersheva shows how widespread discontent with the government has become.Protests have buffeted the country for the past ten weeks. Recently around half a million Israelis turned out in demonstrations across the country, clashing with police and bringing parts of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to a standstill. A third of all of Israel’s secular Jews have demonstrated or signed petitions against the government’s plans, according to the Israel Democracy Institute, a think-tank (almost no ultra-Orthodox Israelis have followed suit).