The lavish wedding party of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and TV presenter Lauren Sanchez concludes this evening in Venice with the main gala event.

But as their celebrity guests step into water taxis from their luxury hotels, paparazzi poised, some Venetians are gathering to protest against the big event.

Their causes are varied, from locals opposed to over-tourism in a delicate city, to activists protesting against climate change and capitalism.

While they plan to march on Saturday evening, plans to launch themselves into the city’s canals with inflatable crocodiles and block the wedding guests’ passage have been dropped.

Spotted heading into Harry Bar’s for lunch on Saturday, Bezos blew kisses towards the cameras when a local journalist asked what he made of the protests.

The city’s deputy mayor dismissed the activists as “narcissists” and insisted the wedding was the “high-quality tourism” Venice needs.

Simone Venturini, city councillor for economic developments, said he hoped “a lot of people will want to get married in Venice” now and boost the city’s wedding sector.

“We are not Iran. The city cannot say who can or who cannot get married. We have no moral police going around,” he told the BBC on the bank of the Grand Canal, as gondolas loaded with tourists drifted by.

The activists have already claimed one win, though.

Tonight’s party was moved further from the city centre for security reasons. The new venue, Arsenale, is easier to protect.

“I think the main problem is that Venice is becoming like an amusement park,” argues Paola, an Italian member of the Extinction Rebellion group.

She’s especially incensed that wedding guests arrived here on private jets and argues the world’s elite are the worst polluters.

“Of course, mass tourism is eating the city alive, but the fact that billionaires can come here and use the city as their amusement park is an enormous problem.”

The Italian media have leapt on the glitz and glamour of what they are dubbing the “wedding of the year.”

Their pages and posts are full of pictures of the 200 or so A-list celebrities now in town, including Leonardo di Caprio and Kim Kardashian.

There’s talk of cuttlefish banquets – tonight’s spread will feature cod, cooked regional-style – and photos of the bride’s white lace Dolce and Gabbana gown, apparently inspired by one worn by Sophia Loren in the 1950s.

It seems, however, that talk of this wedding bringing the city to a halt was overblown.

Ivanka Trump has been spotted at an art gallery, as has Bill Gates, and the newly married couple have been photographed and filmed in various locations and outfits.

But most tourists, or Venetians, are more likely to bump into a Bezos look-a-like, who made the journey from Germany specially to pose for photos, than any of the real-life rich and famous.

There are plenty of water taxis and gondolas still free for hire and no crowds of angry tourists, deprived of their magical ride.

Some streets were briefly closed around the main events but disruption appears to have been minimal.

Most of the posters declaring “No Space for Bezos” have been ripped down and just the odd bit of graffiti can be seen. Attempts to project slogans on buildings were quickly stopped by police.

A planned march by protesters on Saturday evening is taking place with official permission.

But fears of Venice becoming a tourist playground, forcing locals out of town, are no exaggeration.

Just down from the main railway station, police check visitors at random for mandatory day passes. It is a new measure to try to control the crowds.

All around, cafes are packed with people shiny-faced from the humidity and pink from the brutally fierce sun.

A short walk away is the pretty piazza where Roberto Zanon has spent all his life but which he now has to leave.

His landlord has sold his home to out-of-town developers and the 77-year old is being evicted soon together with his two dogs.

Finding anything else in his home city is impossible, Roberto says. He can’t compete with higher-paying tourists.

“One, two, three doors – those are locals, but the rest is all for tourism now,” Roberto says, pointing to the wooden doors around his square.

“There are fewer and fewer Venetians here,” he says quietly, deeply upset at the loss of his home. “There is no purpose any more. You lose your friends. You lose piece of your heart. But sadly this situation is unstoppable.”

That doesn’t mean Roberto is fretting about a billionaire choosing Venice for his wedding, mind you.

He worked in tourism himself for many years and calls it “an honour” to have such famous guests in the city he himself loves so much. “I find it positive.”

He’s not alone.

In a souvenir shop selling magnets and T-shirts, Leda is all in favour of the Bezos-Sanchez bonanza.

She is blunt: “I think there should be more people like Bezos here. Right now we get trash tourism and Venice doesn’t deserve that.”

Leda used to have her own store selling quality Italian goods but had to close it to adapt to a low-spending market. “It’s low-cost, hit-and-run tourism,” she says. “People take 20 euro flights, come here and don’t spend a thing. That’s not what Venice needs.”

So what will be left, when the big party jets out of town?

The deputy mayor confirmed tech boss Bezos had donated “around three million euros” to groups working to protect this fragile city-on-the-water, in a gesture of support.

As for the 30 million euros the wedding might net the city in other ways – activists call that a “drop in the lagoon” for one of the richest men on earth.

“It’s around three euros for a normal person, if you put in proportion to Bezos’s wealth,” Lorenzo from Extinction Rebellion said. “It’s a very low amount of money.”

Back in March, as he turned his back on a ceasefire process that was delivering results, the Israeli prime minister took a decision described by some commentators as akin to “political suicide”.

The Gaza ceasefire deal, brokered by Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff even before the US president was inaugurated to his second term, had led to the release of dozens of hostages from Hamas captivity, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

The next stage was due to see more hostages return home and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, before a negotiated end to the war.

Tired of conflict, Israelis and Palestinians contemplated the end of the most destructive war in a common history too frequently punctuated by fighting.

But Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t want the war to end.

As he ordered the resumption of attacks across Gaza, the prime minister declared that fighting would continue until Hamas had been “completely destroyed”.

The safe return of the remaining hostages in Gaza seemed to be a secondary consideration. (The civilian consequences in Gaza itself didn’t merit a mention.)

Many Israelis, especially the hostage families, were outraged.

They accused Netanyahu of putting his own political survival ahead of their relatives’ safety and the greater good of the nation.

“Bibi’s” popularity in the polls plummeted and he struggled to keep together a disjointed government, propped up by hardline ministers from the far right and orthodox religious parties.

Three months on, Netanyahu is basking in the glory of a spectacular military victory over his nemesis, Iran. He is now said to be contemplating early elections and yet another term as prime minister.

At a press conference earlier this week, the 75-year-old, who is already Israel’s longest-serving leader, said he still had “many missions” to complete and would seek to do so for as long as “the people” of Israel want him to.

Later in the week, and presenting the presumed destruction of Iran’s nuclear programme as a “window of opportunity” that “must not be missed”, Netanyahu suggested only he could secure the “freeing of hostages and defeat of Hamas” after which he would strike wider regional agreements.

But calling early elections would be a big risk and, according to the latest polls, Netanyahu hasn’t enjoyed as big a “bounce” from the 12-day conflict with Iran as he might have hoped for.

In a fractured political system where coalition building is key in the 120-seat Knesset, Netanyahu’s Likud Party would fall well short of a majority by itself and could struggle to pull together support from smaller parties on the right, suggests latest polling in the Ma’ariv newspaper.

The same polling suggested a significant majority, 59% of Israelis, want the fighting in Gaza to stop now, in exchange for the hostages.

Almost half of those asked, some 49%, also thought the only reason Netanyahu is continuing the war is for his own political considerations.

“The guy is a very skilful political actor,” says Professor Tamar Hermann, a senior Research Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. “There is no more skilled politician in Israel.”

But, he says, “trust” is a big problem for Netanyahu.

A political leader who has changed his spots so many times to cling to the reins of power is simply no longer believed by a majority of Israelis.

According to new polling, soon to be released by Prof Hermann’s Israel Democracy Institute, Netanyahu “doesn’t cross the 50% line in terms of Israelis expressing full or even partial trust in him”.

In some ways, says Prof Hermann, deciding to call early elections “is an even greater risk [for Netanyahu] than attacking Iran because in the Middle East you really don’t know where you will be in six months”.

That’s because, despite his military gamble in Iran seemingly paying off, there’s an elephant in the corner of Benjamin Netanyahu’s living room.

Indeed, you could say a small herd of elephants is threatening to disrupt the prime minister’s hopes of yet another term in office.

Next week, he is due to testify in a high-profile criminal case in which he’s facing charges of political corruption, including bribery and fraud.

The prime minister’s attempts to, again, delay the High Court hearings on account of his busy schedule and the special state of emergency (over the Iran war) were rejected at the end of last week.

Netanyahu and his supporters have repeatedly tried to portray the legal case against him as part of a “politically driven witch hunt” but in an increasingly polarised society, his opponents are equally determined he should face justice.

Appearing to belatedly learn about “Bibi’s” legal troubles, President Trump said Netanyahu was a “great hero” and “warrior” whose trial should be “cancelled immediately” or, at the very least, he should be given a pardon.

This, remember, is the same US president who only days earlier had publicly castigated the Israeli prime minister – with expletives – as the Iran ceasefire deal threatened to unravel before it had begun.

But Trump’s latest intervention has been described as unwise and unhelpful by many in Israel.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid said he should not “intervene in a legal process of an independent state”.

His apparently contradictory stance on Israel and attempted intervention in Netanyahu’s legal case was akin to “treating us like a banana republic”, says Prof Hermann.

On the international stage, many Israelis accuse Netanyahu of having harmed Israel’s global standing and its economic prospects by needlessly prolonging the war in Gaza, even though many former generals have said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has achieved as much as is militarily possible in Gaza.

It should not be forgotten, either, that the International Criminal Court still has warrants issued against the prime minister – and former defence minister Yoav Gallant – over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza, where more than 55,000 people have been killed in Israel’s war against Hamas.

Israel’s government, along with Netanyahu and Gallant, strongly reject the accusations.

Ultimately, say most commentators, it would be difficult to imagine new elections being called in Israel while the war in Gaza continues and while Israeli hostages remain captive.

But many of Netanyahu’s critics and opponents have prematurely written him off over the years and have certainly learned never to second-guess what his next move might be.