Israelis protest the ousting of Tel Aviv police chief Amichai Eshed. Photo: Reuters/Nir Elias

Protestors engaged in fierce clashes with police in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night, as thousands of Israelis took to the streets of the city to protest the ousting of its veteran police chief, Amichai Eshed, amid claims from ministers in the right-wing coalition government that he was too restrained in his handling of protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposed judicial reforms.

The most serious confrontation took place on the Ayalon Highway, where protestors waving Israeli flags lit bonfires and blocked traffic. One irate driver reportedly attempted to plow through the crowd, injuring at least one protestor before he was pulled over and arrested.

Police fired water cannon at the protestors as local media outlets reported that they were struggling to restore order. Some residents of surrounding apartment buildings lit fireworks in a gesture of solidarity, drawing appreciative cheers from the assembled protestors below.

With Israel rocked by protests lasting several months against the government’s radical plans to place the judiciary under greater political control, Eshed had been singled out by government figures — among them the far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir — for allegedly treating the demonstrators with kid gloves.

“With my head held high I am paying an intolerably heavy personal price for my choice to avert a civil war,” Eshed said at a press conference following his removal. “I intend to end my service in the police after an orderly handover to my replacement.”

He continued: “I could have easily used disproportionate force and filled the ER at Ichilov [Medical Center] at the end of every demonstration in Tel Aviv. We could have cleared Ayalon [Highway] within minutes at the terrible cost of cracking heads and breaking bones, at the cost of breaking the pact between police and the citizenry.”

Eshed added that he had “taught generations of policemen to recognize the limits of force, to safeguard our contract with the public… Unfortunately, for the first time in my three decades of service, I was met with the bizarre reality that calm and order are not the desired goal, but rather the opposite is.”

At a separate press conference, a furious Ben Gvir accused Eshed of “surrendering to the Israeli left.”

“The trickle of politics into senior police positions is a dangerous crossing of a line,” he went on. He claimed that the current government had been “elected to restore equality under the law, not to allow a police force to behave one way toward [settlers] and another way toward Haredim [Orthodox Jews] and leftist activists.”

In addition to the Ayalon Highway, protesters blocked several intersections around the country as well as gathering in the center of Jerusalem, the nation’s capital. Clashes were also reported outside Netanyahu’s official residence on Azza Street in Jerusalem.

The conflict over Eshed stretches back to March, when Ben Gvir announced that he was transferring him to a new position — widely regarded as a demotion — on the recommendation of Israeli Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai.