Netanyahu Calls for Calm as Demonstrations Intensify, PM's Wife Surrounded at Hair Salon

JERUSALEM, Israel – Ongoing protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government and judicial reform ramped up and turned violent on Wednesday. Protesters even surrounded his wife Sara for hours, trapping her in a Tel Aviv hair salon, prompting Netanyahu to call for calm on national television.

Dubbed a "National Day of Disruption," demonstrators blocked main roads and key junctions in Tel Aviv and around the country. 

Thousands of Israelis have been protesting for weeks against the government's plans to overhaul the legal system and limit powers of Israel's High Court.

Joe Federman, Israel, West Bank, Gaza and Jordan News Director for the Associated Press, said, "So what we saw was a very chaotic scene in Tel Aviv. We saw police on horseback, water cannons, stun grenades. This is something that you do not normally see on Israeli streets."

The violence led Netanyahu to address the press and the nation, calling on demonstrators not to cross red lines.

"I know there are many citizens among you, lovers of the country, who enthusiastically support the legal reform. I also know there are many others, also lovers of the country, who oppose the reform with the same enthusiasm; but in democracy, there are clear rules on how to conduct the debate," Netanyahu said.

In Jerusalem, protesters gathered outside Netanyahu's official residence. And a thousand or more Tel Aviv protesters, after discovering Sara Netanyahu was having her hair done in Tel Aviv, surrounded the salon, chanting slogans and shouting, "She won't be allowed to leave the barber shop!" It took hundreds of police, and pleas from opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, to get the crowd to back off after three hours so they could rescue her.

The Netanyahu's son Yair tweeted, "These enlightened European left-wingers have become the [ideological] twins of their barbaric brothers, the Palestinians. Today, a right-winger entering Tel Aviv is like a Jew wearing a yarmulka entering Ramallah. It's fortunate that this time things didn't end up with a lynch. Ultimately, those who organized and financed all this will be brought to account and will end up behind bars."

In his address, the prime minister defined what the government allows as legitimate protest and what is considered lawlessness.

“We can't accept violence," he said. "We can't accept beating police officers, we can't accept blocking roads, we can't accept threats to public personalities and their families..we will not accept breaking the rules and violence – not in Huwara (an Arab town where Jewish residents of Samaria attacked cars and set fires a few days ago after a murder of two brothers), not in Tel Aviv, and not anywhere."

Netanyahu believes the two sides can find a way to talk and agree with each other.

"We will not raise a hand against each other, because we are brothers; we have no other country," he said.

Meanwhile, five Knesset members, including two from Netanyahu's Likud Pary, called for consensus talks on judicial reform, proposed earlier by Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

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