As pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu grows over his government’s lack of readiness for the October 7 strikes by Palestinian group Hamas and its handling of the accompanying prisoner situation, thousands of Israelis have flocked to the streets.
On Saturday, hundreds of demonstrators were detained by police outside Netanyahu’s home. Protesters shouted “Jail now!” and waved Israeli flags, both blue and white, as they surged past security guards.
Several thousand demonstrators, some of whom were friends and family of some of the detainees, screamed “Bring them home now” in Tel Aviv, the commercial centre of Israel.
According to Hadas Kalderon, who claimed that five of her family members were among the abducted, “I expect and demand from my government that you think outside the box.”
“It seems like I’m in hell,” she declared. “I wake up to a new day of conflict every day. A battle for my children’s lives.”
To date, Netanyahu has not taken accountability for the mistakes that made it possible for hundreds of Hamas fighters to launch an unexpected attack on southern Israel on October 7, killing over 1,400 people and capturing at least 240 more.
Since then, Israel has been at war with Gaza, resulting in the deaths of over 9,400 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children, and the destruction of vast swathes of the beleaguered enclave.
There has been a growing outcry in Israel among the public, with many families of the prisoners imprisoned in Gaza vehemently criticising the government’s response and demanding the return of their loved ones.
Even prior to the conflict, Netanyahu was a contentious figure, having to defend himself against accusations of corruption and enact legislation limiting the judiciary’s authority, which sparked protests from hundreds of thousands of people.
In a survey conducted on Saturday for Israel’s Channel 13 Television, 76% of Israelis stated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now in office for a record-breaking sixth term, ought to step down, and 64% said that elections ought to be held right away following the conflict.
According to a poll, when asked who was most to blame for the attack, 44% of Israelis pointed the finger at Netanyahu, 33% at the military chief of staff and other senior Israeli Defence Force officers, and 5% at the defence minister.
Proposals for ceasefire and “humanitarian pauses”
At a press conference in Amman on Saturday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that the US is advocating for “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza alongside his counterparts from Jordan and Egypt.
The ministers from Egypt and Jordan, however, chastised that stance and reiterated the necessity of an early ceasefire, repeating the demands of other Arab countries.
The armed wing of Hamas announced on Saturday that Israeli airstrikes on Gaza have resulted in the disappearance of over sixty detainees.
On Hamas’s Telegram channel, Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida added that 23 Israeli hostages’ bodies were buried beneath the debris.
“It seems that the occupation’s ongoing brutal aggression against Gaza makes it unlikely that we will ever be able to reach them,” he stated.
