Thousands of protesters gathered across the country Saturday evening, demanding that the government reach a ceasefire and hostage-release deal to end the war in Gaza, a day after US President Donald Trump promised that an agreement was close and hours after the details of a new deal proposed by Washington were revealed by The Times of Israel.

Before the rallies, hostage families accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of working to thwart a ceasefire deal, urged him to accept the new US ceasefire framework, and highlighted the plight of their loved ones days ahead of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and as they approach two years in captivity.

Amid Israel’s renewed offensive to take over Gaza City, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents most of the hostage families, accused Netanyahu of having chosen “a widening of the fighting and thwarting of a deal to bring back” the captives.

“Act on the will of the people — a comprehensive deal to bring back all 48 hostages and end the war in Gaza,” said the Forum.

At the weekly press conference held by hostages’ families before the rallies, Einav Zangauker, mother of captive Matan Zangauker, threatened to intensify demonstrations for a deal if Netanyahu does not come back from his trip to the United States with an agreement in hand.

“In contrast to the campaign of lies by the angel of destruction, Netanyahu, there are 48 families whose loved ones are in captivity, and everyone needs to return, not just those he addressed,” Zangauker said, accusing the prime minister of torpedoing every chance for a deal in the past two years.

“If you sabotage another agreement, we will haunt you until the end of time,” she said. “I am looking at you in the eyes, Netanyahu. If you come back without an agreement, an indescribable hell is waiting for you here. The demonstrations and the strikes in recent weeks will look like child’s play.”

Speaking at the anti-government protest at the Begin Road entrance to the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, Danny Elgarat, brother of slain hostage Itzik Elgarat, whose body was returned to Israel earlier this year, accused Netanyahu of abandoning the hostages and seeking to take over the Shin Bet security service.

He also accused the prime minister of being responsible for a “holocaust” by allowing the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack.

Speaking to some 300 people, in the first anti-government protest there in several weeks, Elgarat parodied the section of Netanyahu’s Friday speech to the United Nations General Assembly in which he posed multiple-choice questions to his viewers.

“What is Bibi responsible for?” asked Elgarat, using the premier’s nickname. “For the October 7 holocaust? For the deaths in captivity of 42 hostages? For the abandonment of the hostages in Gaza? For the abandonment of the soldiers in a political war? Or all of the above?”

As in Netanyahu’s speech, where the premier sought to show that Iran and its proxies sought to kill Westerners, Elgarat said the answer to his question is “all of the above.”

“But the worst sin of all is Netanyahu’s way of abusing the hostage families, and now, the hostages themselves,” he said. He slammed Netanyahu’s order to the military to broadcast his speech via loudspeakers in and around Gaza so that the premier, according to his remarks at the UN, could speak directly to the hostages.

“Instead of embracing and listening [to the hostage families], he operates a network of loudspeakers against the captives and their families, he spreads lies, he spreads lies, he tries to call their loyalty into question and sap their strength,” said Elgarat. “And why? Only because they remind him that he is responsible. And that is a moral low point that only Netanyahu could descend to.”

“In addition to that, there is the corruption that continues harming national security, and at the top of the list, the appointment of the Shin Bet head,” Maj. Gen. (res.) David Zini, Netanyahu’s nominee, whose candidacy was approved by a statutory committee on Thursday after a protracted legal battle.

Critics have assailed Zini for his self-described “messianic” views. Netanyahu nominated Zini to replace former Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who has accused the premier of thwarting a ceasefire deal and trying to scrap a probe of his top aides for alleged criminal ties to Qatar.

“Netanyahu wants to take even the most sensitive body and turn it into a political pawn,” said Elgarat.

“We don’t need more empty speeches — we need strong, honest leadership,” said Elgarat, who is running in primary elections for a seat in Knesset as part of the left-wing The Democrats party.

He expressed hope for “a leadership that is willing to pay a political price to save the nation, bring back the hostages, undo the schism and return the Zionist dream to its rightful place.”

“The real Israel” does not belong to Netanyahu, he said. “It belongs to us, and we’ll establish it anew. We’re going to beat him.”

After the speech, the crowd chanted, “A political war — a betrayal of Israel,” and “Bibi and Sinwar — money from Qatar,” a reference to the Qatari cash that flowed to Gaza in the years before October 7 with Netanyahu’s approval — which many say helped Hamas, then led in the Strip by Yahya Sinwar, carry out the massacre — as well as to allegations that Netanyahu’s aides worked for Qatar while in his employ.

Addressing thousands at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, Doron Steinbrecher, who was released from Hamas captivity in January as part of the most recent Gaza ceasefire, said she doesn’t know if she still believes that the hostages’ return is Israel’s top priority.

“I tried to believe it when my tunnel was bombed and I was smuggled into the streets of Gaza, I tried to believe it when I heard military choppers flying overhead,” she said, as rallygoers unfurled a large poster addressed to Trump, reading: “All 48 hostages home now.”

In captivity, she said, “You want to believe it when you hear the prime minister address you directly via loudspeakers, and you want to believe it when you hear Trump’s threats and promises again and again. You want to believe it when you hear that [White House Mideast envoy Steve] Witkoff is optimistic.”

“You hold on to everything to believe — every date, every memory, every occasion, you mark anything you can so you don’t give up,” she said, days after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.

“But I don’t know if they still believe — I don’t know if I still believe — that everything is being done,” she says. “But I have no choice but to believe they’ll come back,” she added. “We have no choice, and neither do they.”

Amid the current operation to take over Gaza City, “it’s unclear that there will be any living hostages left, unclear that it will be possible to locate the dead,” she said. “Soldiers will keep getting killed and injured mentally and physically… [and] the country will keep being at war and not begin its rehabilitation.”

“We’ve gone through more and more days, holidays and special occasions, and the hostages haven’t returned. Does that not bother decision-makers?” she asked. “I want to believe that everything is being done to bring them home, that it’s the top priority.”

“If there is an opportunity” for a hostage-ceasefire deal now, she said, “don’t miss out on that hope. Save them, [save] us.”

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, hundreds of protesters set out from the Jaffa Gate of the Old City for a march towards the Prime Minister’s Residence.

Marching along the Old City walls, demonstrators chanted: “There is no atonement for a government that forsakes.”

The protesters were jeered by several passersby, mostly Jews in Orthodox garb.

Before the march, an organizer with the Reform Movement led the crowd in a Havdalah ceremony to conclude Shabbat.

She noted that Jews worldwide just celebrated Rosh Hashanah, and would mark Yom Kippur on Wednesday night and Thursday.

“Here we are a moment before Yom Kippur,” she said.

“But we haven’t forgotten for a second that this war is ongoing,” she said, asserting that the new year cannot truly begin “until the hostages return and the war comes to an end.”

The protests came after Netanyahu addressed the UN General Assembly on Friday, where he provoked the ire of hostage families for reading the names of only the 20 hostages still thought to be alive, but not the 28 other captives.

On the sidelines of the General Assembly, Trump met with Arab and Muslim leaders and presented to them a new US plan to release all the hostages and end the war in Gaza.

The ceasefire plan, revealed by The Times of Israel on Saturday, encourages Palestinians to stay in Gaza and arranges for the Palestinian Authority to ultimately take the reins of the Strip — both in contravention of Netanyahu’s public statements.

Trump said on Friday that he was holding intensive talks with Middle Eastern nations on a Gaza ceasefire-hostage deal and that Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas were aware of the discussions, which he said would continue as long as required.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said.

Among the bodies held by Hamas is an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014. Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March 2024, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May 2024 as a “gesture” to the United States.

The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 51 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.