Dozens of people were arrested, said police, who used water cannon and deployed mounted officers to disperse demonstrators in the commercial capital, Tel Aviv.
Announced in January by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the plan has split the nation and sparked one of the country’s biggest ever protest movements, with weekly demonstrations often by tens of thousands.
Protests erupted across the country after parliament adopted, overnight Monday-Tuesday, a key clause of the package in a first reading.
Demonstrators blocked roads across Israel and gathered at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, where local media reported thousands of protesters had converged.
Police reported more than 70 arrests nationwide.
“This is the last chance that we have in order to fight against this kind of demolishing (of) the Israeli democracy,” said Yair Bortinger, 47, a high-tech worker.
“We show everybody that we are a force that they need to reckon with,” he added outside an airport terminal, where crowds blew horns and waved Israeli flags.
Elsewhere, demonstrators brought traffic to a standstill along highways between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Read the article in The Australian (AFP).