Will the Israeli left talk about occupation?

The protests started over frustration not just with the government but also with Israel's opposition

Al Jazeera English:

Many protesters are reluctant to talk about the occupation and settlements for fear of dividing a unified movement.

The protests sweeping Israel this summer are striking not just for their size but for their politics: 300,000 people demanding social justice on the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities makes the Israeli left seem like a viable political force again, perhaps for the first time in years.

"The left here was all but dead," one protester said, a common sentiment in interviews over the last few days. Its formal institutions, after all, are moribund. The Labor party broke apart earlier this year, and until recently it was an uneasy member of Binyamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition; Kadima, Israel's other main centre-left party, has had little influence since 2009, and its leader, Tzipi Livni, has been nearly invisible.

And so the protest movement was born out of frustration: with a seemingly ineffective opposition, and with an array of attacks on left-wing groups, such as the so-called "NGO bill" that would have authorised investigations into liberal human rights groups.

"Kadima not only said nothing about it, but in some cases they participated in the attacks on groups with leftist ideas," said Ran Cohen, the executive director of Physicians for Human Rights. "Kadima is not an opposition party."

The left's sudden return to politics has, in turn, led some commentators to speculate that protesters might broaden their focus beyond purely socioeconomic issues - that they might agitate for equal rights for Israeli Arabs, or push for an end to Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

Continue reading here.