Israelis call for Prime Minister Netanyahu's Resignation (Black Flags Protest), 2016-2021

In the summer of 2016, a small group of Israeli citizens began protesting at various traffic junctions throughout the country carrying signs calling for the resignation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The citizens had several different reasons for calling for Netnayhu’s resignation: the multiple criminal investigations the police were conducting into his affairs, his repeated attacks on democratic ideals, his divisive rhetoric, and his lack of progress in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Around the same time, a group began to gather every week outside Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s house to protest Mandelblit’s handling of the investigation of Netanyahu. The counterprotestors complained that Mandelblit should not have been appointed to the position given his previous position as Netanyahu’s cabinet secretary. One year later, the weekly protests outside Mandelblit’s house grew to around 1,000 protestors.

On 2 December 2017, tens of thousands of protestors gathered in Tel Aviv to demonstrate against a  newly proposed bill that would prevent Israeli police from making public their recommendations to indict someone following an investigation. The bill was widely believed to serve the purpose of shielding Netanyahu from police recommendations to indict him on counts of corruption and bribery. After the protest, Netanyahu announced that he would be proposing an amended version of the bill so that it would not apply to the cases for which he was currently being investigated but only for future cases if they arise. The following week, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered again in Tel Aviv to protest the ‘recommendations law’ (as it became known) along with the recently proposed ‘French law.’ The French law would protect a sitting prime minister from criminal indictment. At the mass demonstrations in Tel Aviv, protestors carried signs and repeated slogans calling for Netanyahu to step down as prime minister.

The protest continued to take place every week in dozens of locations throughout the country with Tel Aviv being the most popular location. Protestors stopped meeting outside the attorney general’s home in 2020, when Netanyahu was officially indicted by Madelblit in three separate corruption cases. However, protestors in the rest of the country continued to meet every week and called for even larger scale protests. In February 2020, a group of 555 air force veterans drafted a letter to the president that called for Netanyahu’s resignation and published it in the newspaper, arguing that he was not fit to serve while undergoing a trial for corruption and bribery. 

Netanyahu’s refusal to resign, despite the corruption indictments against him, led to considerable political instability, in which Israel held three election cycles in the span of 11 months as no party was able to form a governing coalition. This instability was made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and the highly restrictive regulations put in place by the government to combat it. Netanyahu remained in power through it all. In response, protestors staged a sit-in outside the prime minister’s residence in Jerusalem on Balfour street. The sit-in began to attract more and more attention as dozens of people showed up with folding chairs and remained there for the entire day; some stayed overnight, sleeping in sleeping bags on the pavement. The protestors also held events on Balfour street, such as lectures, meditation circles, and concerts. The protesters held a ‘kabbalat shabbat’ prayer every Friday night.

On 26 June 2020, a retired brigadier general, who was a leading member of the sit-in, was arrested by police. This arrest drew criticism from ministers in the government regarding the police’s mishandling of the protests, and it led to the sit-in expanding considerably in size with thousands of civilians coming out to protests multiple times in the first two weeks after the arrest. In the following weeks,the police arrested around a dozen protestors at every protest. At this point in the campaign, dozens of pro-Netanyahu counter protestors started to show up at the protest events shouting and sometimes attacking the campaigners.

As the protests grew, the sit-in expanded into an encampment, taking up a stretch of pavement outside the prime minister's residence. In response, the city sent policemen to raid the encampment and to remove tents, posters, and other equipment. The protests in Jerusalem reached over ten thousand people after word of this police raid spread. Protestors came out to Balfour street almost every night over the coming weeks. Protestors began blocking major roads in Jerusalem to draw attention to the cause. Police responded to the growing protests with water cannons and police on horseback in order to break up the demonstrations.

On 14 July 2020 (the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille during the French revolution),  protestors organized a mass protest titled the ‘Bibistillia’ (a portmanteau blending Netanyahu’s nickname ‘Bibi’ and Bastille in Hebrew), which took place in Paris Square, adjacent to the prime minister’s residence. The police attempted to break up the protest by beating and arresting protestors and hitting them with water cannons. Protestors persisted in marching through the streets singing chants and raising signs calling for Netanyahu to resign as police forcefully pushed them away from Paris Square. 

A lack of centralized leadership characterized these protests. Multiple groups organized along with thousands of individuals unaffiliated with any particular interest group or side on the political spectrum. The protests continued to take place outside the prime minister's house, which became known as the ‘Balfour Encampment’ or the ‘Siege on Balfour.’ People also continued to gather with Israeli flags and banners in junctions throughout the country with many standing on bridges over highways, where they displayed posters with slogans against Netanyahu’s corruption and assault on democracy. The protestors also waved black flags, which became the primary symbol of the anti-Netanyahu protests.

In September 2020, Netanyahu’s ‘Corona Cabinet’ ordered a second Coronavirus lockdown, going against the Coronavirus czar’s recommendation. Many believed this lockdown, which required citizens to remain within a kilometer of their homes, was promoted by Netanyahu in order to stifle the protests against him. In reaction, small citizen protests erupted across the country. Journalists estimated that a quarter of a million people came out to protest within their own communities. In addition, before the lockdown went into effect, a motorcade of cars drove to Jerusalem and back causing major traffic on the highway and including a large protest outside the prime minister’s residence by over ten thousand people.

On 14 October, protestors organized another caravan of cars, which drove from three different points in the country and converged on the prime minister's residence. The cars carried models of submarines due to Netanyahu's alleged involvement in a submarine purchasing corruption case. The caravan stopped in Caesarea, where Netanyahu has his private home, and held a large rally with a concert; some civilian aircraft took part in the rally by performing an air show above the city.

On 4 April, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the lockdown’s restrictions on protesting unconstitutional. On 4 December 2020, an Israeli artist placed a 900 kg bronze statue in Paris Square that depicted a protester kneeling while holding the Israeli flag. The sculpture was based on a photograph taken a few months earlier at a protest, when a protester knelt while holding the Israeli flag to shield himself from a water cannon. The picture received global media attention, and the statue commemorated the moment. The Jerusalem municipality removed  the statue on the same day, and placed it in Tel Aviv a number of months later.

On 22 December 2020, Netanyhu’s government failed to pass a budget, which, under Israeli law, triggered new elections. The protests officially ended the week after Israel's new government was sworn into office. The new government was the first government not to include Netanyahu at the helm (or at all) since 2009. The protestors claimed victory stating that “the immediate threat to democracy has been removed.”