Hostage families and their supporters held two separate, hundreds-strong protests in Tel Aviv on Saturday, with smaller groups also demonstrating across Israel, to demand the government close a hostage-ceasefire deal to free their loved ones from captivity in the Gaza Strip.
The rallies came as Hamas officials indicated an agreement was at hand, while Israeli officials poured cold water on the optimism.
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published an interview in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated his long-standing position that he would not end the war in Gaza, sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre, as part of a hostage deal.
Conflicting reports have emerged in recent days about Hamas’s willingness to release some hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire, without a guaranteed end to the war; so far, the terror group has refused to do so, leaving talks stalled, as Israel has refused any deal that would leave the Palestinian terror group in control of Gaza.
Speaking at the Begin Road entrance to the IDF headquarters, Yifat Calderon, cousin of hostage Ofer Calderon and a prominent anti-government activist, slammed Netanyahu’s comment to the US newspaper.
“We won’t let you give up on them,” she said.
Calderon called on Israeli negotiators, who were reportedly expected in Cairo on Saturday night, to “do everything to free the hostages and end the damn war.”
Shay Mozes, nephew of hostage Gadi Mozes, said that even if a deal is reached, protests must continue to ensure “the government of Israel doesn’t find an excuse to scrap an agreement.”
He said the government “pounced on the opportunity” to resume hostilities after last November’s weeklong truce, which saw 105 civilian hostages freed in exchange for a temporary ceasefire and the release of hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners.
“Hamas said it would stop releasing women and children and continue releasing elderly and slain hostages,” Mozes said, adding that the government preferred to “teach Hamas a lesson, thus abandoning the chance to save lives.”
Hamas claimed last year that it had offered to extend the deal and release more hostages, but that Israel had refused. An unnamed minister told Channel 12 earlier this year that it would have been possible to release more hostages, and that the opportunity was missed due to threats from far-right members of the government.
That same report also cited an unnamed security official, who claimed that Hamas had offered to return seven bodies and three living captives, and that among those purportedly dead were women that Israel knew were alive, and assessed Hamas would kill if Israel accepted the changed terms, and this was why the deal collapsed.
Sophie Ben-Dor, daughter of Eli Cohen — the Israeli spy executed in Damascus in 1965 — also addressed the anti-government protest on Saturday, saying her father had sacrificed himself for a “Jewish democratic Israel” which the government is acting against.
She accused Netanyahu of failing to listen to her family’s requests to bring her father’s body home — but said, “I assume that if Dad’s bones are brought back and buried in the Land of Israel, the prime minister will be the first to revel in the achievement.”
She referred to the recent downfall of Syria’s Assad regime as a “late present” for her late father, whose 100th birthday came two days before rebels took Damascus.
A block away, at the Hostage Families Forum’s weekly rally at the so-called Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, speakers reiterated the Forum’s opposition to a deal that wouldn’t release all the hostages at once.
Eli Shtivi, father of slain hostage Idan Shtivi, implored Netanyahu to “stop the selection” — the Nazi practice of sending sickly Jews to die and healthy Jews to slave labor — “the distinction between blood and blood, the division into stages.”
“Now is the time to bring home all 100 hostages, without compromises or stages,” he said.
Also speaking at the Hostages Square rally was Hen Avigdori, whose wife Sharon and daughter Noam were released from Hamas captivity during the November truce last year.
“The prime minister said that ‘the time is ripe’ for a deal, so I want to remind everyone: if you have a ripe fruit and you don’t seize the opportunity—if you dawdle, drag your feet, and waste time—that ripe fruit will rot,” he said.
Noam Peri, whose father Chaim Peri, 79, was killed in captivity, emphasized her belief that the slain hostage “could have been saved and brought home through a deal.”
“For us and for 26 other families whose loved ones entered Gaza alive and returned in black bags, the cost of missing an opportunity for a deal is very tangible. Very personal. Very painful,” she said.
Protests in support of a hostage deal were also held Saturday night in Jerusalem, Ra’anana, Beersheba, Carmei Gat, Modi’in, and various other locales and intersections across the country.
Meanwhile, speaking to about 1,000 protesters on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid vowed to topple the government, in a fiery speech that drew some heckles from disenchanted audience members.
Protests have returned to Kaplan Street in recent weeks to rail against the government’s renewed push to overhaul the judiciary.
“There will be no compromise. We won’t bend over, we won’t give up and we will never enter the government,” yelled Lapid, in an apparent jab at his erstwhile ally National Unity chair Benny Gantz who joined the government at the beginning of the war in Gaza.
Lapid said the government is afraid to dissolve because it knows it will lose in an election.
Yair Golan, head of The Democrats — a merger of the left-wing Labor and Meretz parties — milled around the audience, stopping for selfies with supporters.
A large contingent of Yesh Atid activists was present as well.
A few feet away from the crowd, some two dozen activists held a more stridently left-wing protest, hoisting signs accusing the government of committing genocide in Gaza.
After Lapid’s speech, the Kaplan Street protest broke up and joined the anti-government protest by the hostage families at Begin Road.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
It is believed that 96 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Four hostages were released before the week-long truce in November. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 38 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.