The execution in cold blood of six Israeli hostages by Hamas fighters in southern Gaza could topple Israel’s fragile coalition government and finally force a deal that ends the 11-month war.

Certainly it will create tremors in Israel that reverberate for many years to come.

Rather than surrender their prisoners and hand Israel another victory, it seems Hamas shot them one at a time, leaving their corpses to be found by advancing IDF forces some 20 metres underground.

The fear and despair they must have experienced in those moments after being held hostage in Gaza for more than 10 months is scarcely imaginable.

The tragedy - which in some respects recalls the Munich massacre of 1972 in which 11 Israeli Olympians were executed by cornered Palestinian terrorists during a botched rescue attempt - may yet mark an inflection point.

At the time of writing, a one-day general strike was in the offing, while hostages’ families, opposition politicians and even Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, blamed Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, for sabotaging the ceasefire talks.

As with Munich, the latest tragedy is made worse by the fact that the release of the hostages was so tantalisingly close. Three of the six, including the young US-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin who survived losing an arm in the Oct 7 assault, had been slated for immediate release as part of the ceasefire negotiations.

The Munich rescue was botched by the Germans and led to an unwritten social contract being adopted in Israel: that no Israeli held hostage would ever again be left behind.

On Sunday, the Hostages’ Families Forum demanded Mr Netanyahu make a public appearance to “take responsibility” for the deaths of the hostages, rather than hide behind the IDF.

Mr Gallant meanwhile called on the security cabinet to reverse the decision made last week to continue an Israeli presence along the Gaza-Egypt border - a decision that is widely seen as having sunk the hostage release talks in Cairo.

Announcing a general strike on Monday, Arnon Bar-David, chief of the Labor Federation, said “a deal is more important than anything else”.

Channelling the spirit of Israel’s unwritten social contact, he added: “We are no longer one people; we are camp against camp … we need to bring back the State of Israel.

“We are getting body bags instead of a deal.”

Yet despite mounting pressure, Mr Netanyahu remains resolute. He has long preferred to emphasise a second, less noble, lesson that Israel took from Munich: that terror should be met with terror through extrajudicial assassination of those responsible.

But the political rope Mr Netanyahu is walking is horribly thin. He has kept his fragile governing coalition going by pandering to the hard-Right.

If Mr Gallant were to resign or significantly larger numbers of people took to protesting on the streets - as some are calling for - it could collapse overnight.

Polls also show an overwhelming majority of Israelis want a ceasefire that sees the remaining hostages returned alive.

After the latest killings, the pressure is now so high that Mr Netanyahu may be forced to reconsider his position and reaffirm Israel’s social contract.