Crowds assembled in Tel Aviv and across Israel on Saturday evening to demand that the government reach a ceasefire deal for the release of the 48 remaining hostages in Gaza, as the families denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for Tuesday’s strike targeting Hamas’s leadership in Qatar, which appears to have set back talks for a Gaza hostage-release and ceasefire deal.
Speaking at the main weekly rally at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, former hostage Sharon Alony Cunio, whose husband David remains in Hamas captivity in Gaza and is thought to be alive, accused the government of life-threatening procrastination in the release of the remaining 48 captives.
“Netanyahu opposes the approach that he himself initiated,” she said, presumably referring to the prime minister rejecting a temporary hostage deal, which he had once said he preferred over a comprehensive agreement. “The negotiations have been cut off again, and this time with fire and pillars of smoke. Every delay is a mortal danger.”
“I am not prepared to become a widow because of hesitancy or torpedoing” of a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, she continued. “I am not prepared to become another name in the list of victims of government obtuseness. I am demanding to save David’s life and those of all the living hostages, and to bring back all the fallen hostages now.”
Her husband, Alony Cunio said, was left in captivity “when Israel decided to thwart the second deal” earlier this year, collapsing it after what should have been the first of three stages, “and also when Israel went on an assassination mission in Qatar” this past Tuesday, which Netanyahu hinted earlier on Saturday had failed to meet its goal of taking out Hamas’s top leadership abroad.
“I’m dying of fear. What is he going through now?” she asked.
“We won’t let our country enter a ‘hostage routine,’” she vowed. “There will be no routine here until they come back — in a deal.”
Maccabit Meyer, aunt of twin captives Gali and Ziv Berman, also speaking at the rally, assailed Israel’s decision to target Hamas’s top brass in a strike in Doha.
“Now, of all times, it’s necessary to eliminate the political arm [of Hamas] because there’s an opportunity,” she said sarcastically, as the crowd jeered. “There are opportunities for everything except for Gali and Ziv and the rest of the 48 hostages.”
“Where the hell is the shame?” Meyer asked. “How can it be that nobody [in the government] shouts, ‘Enough’?”
Addressing the government, she asked: “Where is your heart and conscience? How are you not afraid we’ll get back 48 coffins — maybe fewer because some will disappear?”
Despite opposition from hostage families and much of the public, Israel is pressing ahead with its expanded offensive aimed at conquering Gaza City. The military has urged a full evacuation of the area holding around 1 million people ahead of an expected invasion.
Far-right members of Israel’s governing coalition have cornered Prime Minister Benajmain Netanyahu, threatening to topple his government unless Israel pushes ahead with an expanded operation in Gaza City, despite serious misgivings by many in the military leadership and widespread opposition among Israel’s public.
Hamas has warned Israel that the planned offensive to conquer Gaza City would subject hostages in the area to the “same risks” as the terror group’s fighters.
“This will be your shame forever,” Meyer said. “The people want them back and the people will remember… you’ve messed with the wrong people.”
Former captives Keith and Aviva Siegel also called to reach a deal, which Keith stressed was “not just an emotional duty, not just a moral duty,” but a “Jewish, national and human duty.”
Fourteen-year-old former hostage Alma Or, whose parents were murdered in the Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023, and whose father Dror’s body is still held by the terror group in Gaza, said slain captive Carmel Gat, with whom she was abducted, “could have been with us, alive, had the deal happened in time.”
Gat was murdered alongside five other hostages in a tunnel under Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, last August.
“Some things can no longer be changed, but bringing my father back for the burial he so deserves — that’s possible,” said Alma. “A girl should not have to beg for her father’s remains.”
“October 7 has to end,” she said. “Everyone must come back, in a deal, now.”
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.