The May 3 demonstration turned Rabin Square in the heart of Tel Aviv into a battleground. As the protest reached its climax, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office attempted to restore calm by issuing a press release stating that the prime minister will be hosting an urgent discussion on the matter, with the participation of the leading representatives of the Ethiopian community. One such representative named in the statement was the soldier Damas Pakedeh, who was seen in a video last month being beaten by the police for no apparent reason. It was this very video clip that incited the current protests, which, in retrospect, are some of the most violent that Israel has ever seen.

Just as he did in the stormiest days of the social protests during the summer 2011, Netanyahu is taking rapid, point-specific steps to calm down everyone and restore order. He did the same thing after the elections, when he invited the senior leadership of Israel’s Arab population to his office. For the prime minister, this was a kind of public apology for his racist announcement on Election Day that “the Arabs are heading to the polls in droves.”

Netanyahu’s office has an orderly battle plan for events of this kind. His people organize well-publicized meetings with representatives of whatever group was hurt or is currently protesting, but only after carefully selecting representatives unlikely to cause a commotion. Netanyahu’s staff is fixated on finding representatives who will express their gratitude to the leader for deigning to devote some of his busy time to them. He promises them extreme empathy, all in front of the cameras, of course, and says that he will personally lead the effort to deal with the specific problems faced by that specific community, group or sector. If necessary, he even announces the establishment of a “committee to study the problem.” Then, when put to the test of time and results, very little, if anything, actually happens. Meanwhile, however, Netanyahu has succeeded in buying himself more time.

This time, however, it looks like Netanyahu’s methods won’t work. The Ethiopian-Israelis’ protests erupted only after their discontent had a chance to seethe in their community for over two decades. This makes the current wave of protests unlike any other social protest that Israel has ever seen before. These aren’t the fair-but-friendly tent city 2011 social justice protests of the middle class, which were more like Woodstock than anything else. This was a violent outburst by people who have nothing to lose, and whose alienation from the state runs so deep that they no longer play by the rules of the game.