ISRAELI Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence was besieged by thousands of protesters demanding his resignation for the 12th weekend running yesterday and today.

Demonstrators held banners reading “revolution” and “get out of here” as they called for his resignation over corruption charges and the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

A sign was projected on a building, reading “enough with you,” while smaller crowds gathered on bridges and intersections across the country also calling for the PM to step down. Communist and socialist participants in the rallies carried banners calling for brotherhood between Jewish and Arab workers.

At least 13 arrests were made, including a man who police said “was dressed up as a woman in a provocative way.” Two officers were slightly injured when a crowd burst through a police blockade, they said.

Over 1,000 Israelis have now died from coronavirus, while official statistics published last week recorded 199.3 new cases per day per million people, the highest per-capita infection rate in the world.

Unemployment has soared to 21 per cent and the mass protests are now being joined by industrial action over government attacks on workers. Thousands of technicians employed by labs processing Covid-19 tests walked out in an open-ended strike beginning on August 30, attacking privatisation and outsourcing in the health sector.

“If only there was a 10th of the amount [spent on private laboratories] invested in the public labs, we would have no reason to strike,” Union of Biochemists, Microbiologists & Laboratory Workers chair Esther Admon said.

The Finance Ministry has proposed a 27-month pay cut for public-sector workers as a cost-cutting measure in the wake of the economic crisis caused by coronavirus, to kick in next month, prompting Israel’s much criticised trade-union organisation Histadrut  — which has long been attacked internationally for its complicity in the occupation of Palestine and refusal to fight for the rights of non-Jewish workers — to declare an official dispute and warn of potential strike action by Israel’s 700,000 public-sector workers. 

Divisions between Mr Netanyahu’s Likud and his rival and Defence Minister Benny Gantz’s Blue & White party also mean that Israel currently has no agreed state budget.