For more than three weeks, waves of social unrest have swept Israel on a level not seen before, Haaretz reports. According to the liberal daily, Israel is “in the midst of what is increasingly shaping up to be an Israeli revolution.”

As Israelis protest over the cost of housing and poor economic conditions, some analysts are asking whether Israel is facing its own Arab Spring. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities each of the past three weekends to “demand social justice,” and tent cities have sprung up across the country. Parents have marched through Tel Aviv demanding better childcare, and dairy farmers have flooded a busy intersection with milk to draw attention to their low income.

What started out as demands for cheaper housing has developed into demands for sweeping changes to Israel’s economy and society such as a new taxation system, free education and privatization of state-owned companies. Despite strong economic growth and low unemployment, Israelis are discontented with the country’s high cost of living, high poverty rate and high income inequality. Some commentators in Israel believe the motive for the protests, however, is more political than economic, an effort by the Israeli left to take advantage of popular discontent.

Whatever the factors stirring up the social unrest, any resultant political turmoil will only make Israel more inwardly focused and isolationist at a time when it is facing its greatest outside threats—an increasingly powerful Iran, the prospect of Islamists taking over Arab allies and the threat of a third intifada—not to mention the unseen threat from its seeming ally Europe.