Thousands of protesters gathered at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square on Thursday to demand a ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza, the first such demonstration since a truce ended 12 days of war between Israel and Iran.

All the speakers at the protest were women, most of them mothers of soldiers in Gaza who highlighted their plight amid the ongoing war. It came a day after the IDF announced that seven soldiers had been killed in Khan Younis.

Opening the protest, a choir of soldiers’ mothers sang “Hatikva,” Israel’s national anthem.

Labor MK Efrat Rayten, herself the mother of a combat soldier who has served in Gaza, called for Israel to “end the war now and strive toward a diplomatic settlement.”

She recalled the history of Rabin Square, the site of some of Israel’s largest anti-war demonstrations, when mothers of soldiers demanded an end to Israel’s 1982-2000 military presence in southern Lebanon.

“This square has seen mothers get their sons out of the morass of Lebanon. Now it’s our turn to get them out of the morass of Gaza,” she said.

“It’s not our children who should pay the price of the failed leadership,” she said. “It’s the government. And they’ll pay the price.”

One of the organizing groups of the protest was Ima Era (Wide-awake mother), which brings together mothers of soldiers. The group’s name alludes to mothers’ difficulty sleeping knowing their children could be killed at war — a fear that speakers say is foreign to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and many of his ministers.

Ima Era activist Michal Hadas Rubin, whose son is a combat soldier in Gaza, said the government was “buying day after day of political survival and paying with the lives of our children.”

She said she had taught her children to enlist in the IDF out of a feeling of national responsibility, but that was “not a blank check to sacrifice our kids.”

“The military mission ended long ago, but it can be completed only through diplomatic action,” she said. “Wars end with agreements.”

After the speeches, protesters marched to the Begin Road entrance to IDF Headquarters to continue the demonstration there. Many of the protesters held small battery-powered toy candles. Backing up the march was a mock funeral procession with eight faux coffins.

Police arrested at least four anti-government protesters on Begin Road, according to a lawyer group offering pro bono services to people detained at anti-government demonstrations.

The Haaretz daily reported that protesters were detained for blocking traffic on Namir Road, a major route that feeds into Begin.

The families of hostages held in Gaza are working with senior US government officials to organize a meeting with US President Donald Trump next week, Channel 12 reported Thursday.

“Trump is the one who can put pressure on the mediators, on Hamas, and also the Israeli government to choose a comprehensive deal, despite opposition from [hard-right Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich and [National Security Minister] Itamar Ben Gvir,” families told Channel 12.

The apparent push to meet Trump came amid several media reports that said the US President was pushing Netanyahu to conclude the war against Hamas following the success of the 12-day war against Iran.

Kan news reported that Trump’s call on Thursday to cancel Netanyahu’s criminal trial was also linked to this effort.

According to Israel Hayom, as part of the American president’s plan to end the war, new countries would join the Abraham Accords, and Israel would be required to commit to supporting a future Palestinian state.

Citing an unnamed source familiar with a phone call between Netanyahu and Trump, the newspaper reported that during the call, the two leaders agreed to wrap up the war in Gaza within two weeks, requiring Israel to halt its military offensive and Hamas to release the remaining 50 hostages.

The Palestinian terror group’s leadership would then be exiled, and four Arab states, including the UAE and Egypt, would be tasked with jointly governing the war-torn enclave in its place, the report said. It did not identify the other two Arab states that would supposedly help govern the territory.

As part of the rehabilitation of the Strip, any Gazans wishing to emigrate would be absorbed by several unnamed countries, Israel Hayom said.

Arab states have repeatedly asserted that they will not take part in the postwar rehabilitation of Gaza absent Israeli acquiescence to the Palestinian Authority gaining a foothold in the Strip as part of a pathway to a future two-state solution, a demand that, until now, Netanyahu has flatly rejected.

Moreover, Hamas’s leaders have also long rejected demands to go into exile.

As part of the plan, Trump and Netanyahu were said to have agreed that Israel would be required to express support for a future two-state solution, conditioned on reforms made by the Palestinian Authority. In exchange, Washington would recognize Israeli sovereignty in some parts of the West Bank.

With the end of the war in Gaza and a renewed Israeli commitment to a future two-state solution, both Saudi Arabia and Syria would establish ties with Israel under the Abraham Accords, the report stated, and other Arab and Muslim countries would follow suit.

Saudi Arabia has long conditioned the establishment of diplomatic ties on Israel’s commitment to Palestinian statehood, while the possibility of peace with Syria has been raised repeatedly in recent months as the two countries are reportedly in direct contact following the fall of the Assad regime last year.

But even amid the renewed push to bring an end to the war, Kan reported that no progress had been made in Cairo, where Palestinian American political activist Bishara Bahbah has been in talks with senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad about a US ceasefire proposal.

A security official with knowledge of the details of talks told Channel 12 on Thursday that associates of Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya were pushing him to reach a deal.

“They are telling him, ‘You have no support and no sponsors. You have to begin to move, you have no one to lean on,'” the official said.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 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. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

Lazar Berman contributed to this report.