Bearing flags and posters of hostages, hundreds of Israelis marched along a busy street in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, demanding a ceasefire in Gaza as their prime minister addressed the US Congress.
“Get out of the AC, get out of your houses, come to the street!” one of the demonstrators called through a microphone to bystanders watching from bars and balconies in Israel’s largest city.
“We are not a parade! You are seeing here families whose children were kidnapped in their beds on a Saturday morning,” he shouted. “It could have been your family.”
Thousands of miles away, Benjamin Netanyahu was seeking to buoy support from Israel’s main backer with a speech to Congress as the war against Hamas barrelled toward 300 days.
While Israel’s steadfast ally has maintained its support and military supplies for the war effort, relations have been strained by the spiralling civilian death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, with protests erupting in the United States and increasing criticism from President Joe Biden’s administration.
Netanyahu, who has insisted military force is the only way to defeat Hamas, reiterated in the Capital his vow to achieve military victory in Gaza.
Responding to Netanyahu’s speech, the Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said “45 minutes of speech and applause won’t erase the one sad fact: the words ‘Deal Now!’ were absent from the prime minister’s address.”
‘Shame to our country’
In Tel Aviv’s “hostage square”, relatives of the captives seized by Palestinian militants urged him to silence the guns.
“I want to tell you my Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, my grandfather could have been alive today with us, he was waiting for someone to come and save him,” Talya Dancyg told the gathering.
“He was waiting for you to seal the deal,” she continued in an emotional speech just two days after it was announced that her grandfather, Alex Dancyg, had died in captivity in Gaza.
“Every day that passes and our people are still there it’s a shame to our country,” she added.
“Deal now,” the protesters chanted in reply.
At home, Netanyahu has found himself caught between a public that increasingly supports prioritising a deal to release the dozens of hostages still in captivity, and a right-wing flank of his coalition that has threatened to collapse the government if he agrees to a ceasefire.
“You told the families not to lose hope,” said Omri Shtivi, whose brother Idan was taken hostage at the Nova music festival.
“I haven’t lost hope but the hostages have… Any decision you make will shape the contours of our future, and if you want us to keep hope, you just need to say: ‘there is a deal’.”
Israel has recently intensified its attacks on Gaza and Netanyahu maintains only piling on military pressure can free the hostages and defeat Hamas, which launched a shock attack on October 7 that resulted in the deaths of 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza, including 44 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza has killed at least 39,145 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
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