Tel Aviv police chief resigns: “I’m paying a heavy personal price for trying to avert civil war”:
Ami Eshed cited alleged interference from Itamar Ben Gvir in a move that brought thousands on to the streets in protest
Tel Aviv’s police chief has resigned citing political interference from the national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who heads a far-right party.
District Police Commander Ami Eshed, accused by Ben-Gvir of being “too lenient” on tens of thousands of anti-government protesters, signed off with a stinging rebuke, saying he was “paying a heavy personal price for trying to avert civil war”.
Eshed said ministers had wanted him to “violate the rules, protocols, organisational structure, and culture in decision-making and operational judgement”.
Had he done what ministers wanted, he suggested, “we could have cleared the highway in minutes, at the cost of crushing heads and breaking bones… We’d have filled the emergency room at Ichilov Hospital at the end of every demonstration.”
The news prompted angry scenes. More than two dozen anti-government protesters were arrested in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Wednesday night, as was a man who drove his car into them.
It was the latest sign that the country appears to be teetering on the brink of major civil discord, fanned by the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition of far-right and strictly Orthodox parties, who want to erode the power of Israel’s judiciary in order to push through seemingly unconstitutional domestic agendas.
On Tel Aviv’s main Ayalon Highway, mounted police and water cannons were used to disperse protesters, while in Jerusalem, protesters marched from Paris Square to the prime minister’s residence. Two women were injured and 25 people were arrested.
Ben-Gvir said Eshed’s comments “prove that a political commissioner served in the Israel Police in uniform,” adding: “I wish him great success in the future as a candidate at the next election for a leftist party.”
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