As many as 400,000 Israelis demonstrated last night against the high cost of living and for social justice in one of the largest protests in the nation's history, although questions remained about what it might achieve.
The mass protest across the country had been planned for weeks and was considered by many to be the grand finale of the street phase of the social dissent that has swept Israel this summer.
Organizers initially billed it as a million-person march, but had tried to lower expectations over the last few days, saying that it would be considered a success if the turnout equalled the 300,000 people who took to the streets on August 6th.
The police estimated that more than 300,000 people turned, but a company monitoring the turnout for the Israeli news media said the total was about 400,000, with almost 300,000 gathering in Tel Aviv alone.
Tens of thousands more rallied in Jerusalem, Haifa and other cities. The nationwide protest came after a lull in the movement over the last two weeks. The country's attention was first diverted by a mid-August attack by Palestinian militants that killed eight Israelis near the southern city of Eilat, near the Egyptian border, and a subsequent flare-up in violence along the Israel-Gaza border.
The most visible symbols of the protest movement, the scores of tent encampments that sprang up around the country, have gradually emptied as summer vacations ended and people went back to work and school.
Yesterday, the main rally in Tel Aviv began with a march and ended in Kikar Hamedina, a broad traffic circle and park lined with luxury stores.
Television commentators noted that not one display window was broken; the protests, largely driven by the middle class, have been carnival-like and non-violent.
"This square is filled with the new Israelis who would die for this country, but who expect you, prime minister, to let us live in this country," Itzik Shmuli, the chairman of the National Union of Students and a leader of the protest movement, said from the stage at the Tel Aviv rally.
Daphne Leef (25) the young woman who pitched the first tent in Tel Aviv in mid-July and invited friends to join her on Facebook, told the crowd that the fact that her generation had stood up and raised its voice was "nothing short of a miracle”
Organizers have said that many of the tent encampments will end in the next few days but that the spaces may become communal meeting places.
The protest movement's next milestone is likely to come this month when a government-appointed committee on socioeconomic change led by Manuel Trajtenberg, a respected professor of economics at Tel Aviv University, presents its recommendations to the government.
The panel was set up in response to the protests.
The protests began over the lack of affordable housing, but grew to encompass calls for tax reform and the creation of a welfare state, among other demands.
Mr Shmuli has urged that protesters co-operate with the committee, but Ms Leef and other members of the protest movement's informal leadership have rejected such a move.
New York Times