Protests held across Israel calling for end to war in Gaza

Israeli protesters took to the streets on Sunday calling for an end to the war in Gaza and a deal to release captives held in Gaza.

The protests come days after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to fully occupy Gaza City.

Forty-nine Israeli captives remain in Gaza, including 27 whom the Israeli military say are dead.

A large Israeli flag covered with portraits of the remaining captives was unfurled in Tel Aviv’s so-called Hostage Square, which has been a focal point for protests.

Demonstrators blocked several roads in the city, including the highway connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, where demonstrators set tyres on fire and caused traffic jams.

Protest organisers and the main campaign group representing the families of captives called for a general strike on Sunday – the first day of the week in Israel.

In Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, many businesses were shut.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group said in a statement that protesters would “shut down the country today (Sunday) with one clear call: Bring back the 50 hostages, end the war”.

Israeli government ministers condemned the demonstrations.

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich decried “a perverse and harmful campaign that plays into the hands of Hamas”.

He stated that public pressure to secure a ceasefire agreement effectively “buries the hostages in tunnels and seeks to push the State of Israel to surrender to its enemies and jeopardise its security and future”.

Culture Minister Miki Zohar, of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that blocking roads and disrupting daily life “is a serious mistake and a reward to the enemy”.

Israeli police beefed up forces, saying no “public order disturbances” would be tolerated.

Footage from AFP showed protesters at a rally in Beeri, a kibbutz near the Gaza boundary that was one of the hardest-hit communities in the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.

Reporting by AFP