Coalition lawmakers blasted the general strike on Sunday called by the families of hostages and supported by a wide array of companies and organizations, claiming that it only benefits Israel’s enemies.

“The nation of Israel is waking up this morning to a bad and damaging campaign that plays into Hamas’s hands, buries the hostages in the tunnels and tries to make Israel surrender to its enemies,” far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich posted on X.

The strike and day of protests was organized after the security cabinet earlier this month approved a plan to conquer Gaza City, despite warnings from military officials that the operation would risk the lives of the remaining hostages. The decision was also seen as dealing a major blow to any efforts to reach a deal with Hamas for a ceasefire and hostage release.

Smotrich claimed on Sunday that the strike fell short of the hype that was built up over the past week.

“The campaign has not taken off and involves very few people,” he wrote. “The State of Israel is not standing still and not striking.”

Protests are slated for several hundred locations across Israel throughout the day, and activists blocked a number of major highways Sunday morning with the start of the demonstrations. Hundreds of local authorities, businesses, universities, tech companies and other organizations announced that they would join the strike or allow employees to join if they wished to, although the Histadrut, the main labor union, said it would not take part.

Smotrich, who vocally favors Israeli annexation of Gaza and the reestablishment of settlements there, claimed that the events of the day show that the “vast majority” of Israelis “understand that a state that values life cannot surrender to its enemies and stop the war a moment before the destruction of Hamas.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir also claimed that “the strike today failed.”

“These are the same people who weakened Israel [before October 7], and are trying to do it again today,” he added, drawing a comparison between the current anti-government protests and the activists who rallied in 2023 against the judicial overhaul plan.

“This strike strengthens Hamas and moves us further away from bringing back the hostages,” Ben Gvir alleged. “Of course afterward they’ll blame the government of Israel. This is what a political campaign at the expense of the hostages looks like.”

Transportation Minister Miri Regev of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party slammed the “handful of people who have decided to sow division and turn solidarity with our dear hostages into a political campaign.”

“They burn roads and harm infrastructure,” she added, sharing a photo of a fire on a highway during a protest blocking the road. “Instead of uniting and strengthening the people of Israel and the hostages, they are strengthening Hamas.”

Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu charged that the pain of the families of hostages and those killed on October 7 was being exploited by political opportunists.

“There is a gaping chasm between pained families whose pain clouds their judgment and cynical anarchists who are taking advantage of that pain,” wrote Eliyahu, a member of the hard-right Otzma Yehudit party.

He suggested that those taking part in the strike “know exactly what message they are sending to Hamas… ‘After another week or two of pressure you’ll get everything.'”

Every call “to end the war is another dose of oxygen to Hamas in the tunnels,” added Eliyahu, asserting that the “left-wing camp needs a responsible adult” to remind them to “put the country ahead of politics.”

The minister added that the families of those being held hostage “are worthy of our compassion, our understanding, our embrace. The cynics who are exploiting them deserve our contempt.”

Polls have consistently shown that a large majority of Israelis support a deal with Hamas to release the remaining 50 hostages and end the war. The planned invasion of Gaza City is expected to take months.

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, meanwhile, voiced support for the hostages’ families and offered his full-throated backing for the general strike.

“We are shutting down the country today,” Lapid said in a video message delivered from Hostages Square in Tel Aviv on Sunday morning, which he later posted online.

“Because our hostages are not pawns that the government is allowed to sacrifice for the sake of the war effort — they are citizens that the government must return to their families,” he added. “They won’t stop us, they won’t tire us, they won’t exhaust us, we’ll continue to fight until the hostages return home, there’s a deal, the war ends.”

Writing earlier on X, Lapid slammed the “new and disgusting talking points” of government ministers who “accuse the strikers and protesters for the hostages of ‘helping Hamas.'”

“Have you no shame? Nobody has strengthened Hamas more than you,” Lapid wrote. “The only thing that will weaken Hamas is ousting this failed, malicious government. The only thing that is strengthening the country is the incredible spirit of the people who have left their homes today in Israeli solidarity.”

Blue and White-National Unity chairman Benny Gantz also expressed support for the families and strikers and slammed the government’s criticism.

“To attack the families of the hostages – when you bear responsibility for their children being held captive by Hamas for nearly two years – weakens and divides us,” wrote Gantz on X. “To support them – that is what strengthens us and them.”