Mass protests erupt in Israel as IDF readies plans to occupy Gaza City

Washington Post

11 hours ago

JERUSALEM — Thousands of Israelis stayed home from work, flooded city streets and blocked roads and highways across the country on Sunday, staging some of the largest anti-war protests in months as the military prepares for a major assault on Gaza City, the humanitarian crisis there deepens and anxiety mounts over the conditions of the hostages still in captivity.
The widespread strike on Sunday, a work day in Israel, was organized by the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, an umbrella group representing many families of current or former Israeli hostages. The group called for action in response to the government's decision this month to seize control of Gaza's largest city, an operation that could take months and involve the forced displacement of an estimated 1 million Palestinians.
Top military leaders and some Israeli citizens oppose the plan, worried that it would endanger the 20 hostages authorities presume are still alive, strain army resources and erode prospects for recovering the bodies of 30 more hostages who were either killed in the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, or died while in captivity.
'Hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens will shut down the country today with one clear call: Bring back the 50 hostages, end the war,' the forum said.
That call came as Eyal Zamir, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, met with military commanders in Gaza. He said Israel's battle plans for the next phase of the war would be approved on Sunday, with 'a focus on Gaza City.'
'We will continue striking until Hamas is defeated, with the hostages always before our eyes,' he told the commanders, according to an IDF readout of the meeting.
Major tech companies and a body of civil aviation workers announced they would allow employees to go on strike. Israel's main trade union federation, the Histadrut, declined to participate, though chairman Arnon Bar-David joined protesters in Tel Aviv to show solidarity.
'Declaring a strike would have colored this struggle as a political struggle — and that is the last thing I want to happen,' he told relatives of hostages there. 'This is not about right or left, it is about human beings — bringing back those who were kidnapped from their beds, from their shifts, or from their tanks.'
The demonstrations kicked off early in cities including Tel Aviv and Haifa, as well as outside Kibbutz Beeri, a community along the perimeter with Gaza that was overrun by Palestinian militants on Oct. 7, 2023. That day, Hamas and allied groups streamed into southern Israel, killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages back to the Gaza Strip. Israel's retaliatory war in Gaza, which has lasted 22 months, has killed more than 61,000 people, according to local health officials; leveled large swaths of the enclave and plunged the area into a humanitarian crisis.
Israelis, especially in Tel Aviv, have protested regularly throughout the war to call on the government to reach a deal with Hamas to bring the hostages home. Increasingly, mainstream Israeli media have spotlighted the dire starvation crisis in Gaza after months of Israel's near-total aid blockade on the besieged enclave, horrifying some Israelis and triggering protests.
'Enough is enough,' said Aya Shilon-Hadass, a doctor at Sheba Tel HaShomer Medical Center who joined hundreds of health workers at a march in Tel Aviv. 'You can't build a society or trust one another when our brothers and sisters are abandoned, while the bloodshed continues on both sides. The war must stop.'
Former hostages filled the Tel Aviv plaza that is now known as 'Hostages Square.' Arbel Yehud was held for more than a year by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant group in Gaza, before she was released in January during a two-month ceasefire.
'My partner Ariel Cunio and his brother David, along with 48 other hostages, are still there in captivity in Gaza,' she told the crowd, according to the families forum. 'I know firsthand what it's like to be in captivity. I know that military pressure doesn't bring hostages back — it only kills them.'
Several local governments threw their support behind Sunday's protests: Tel Aviv canceled some cultural activities and shut swimming pools, and the municipality in nearby Herzliya said it would bus residents to the main protest planned for Sunday evening in Tel Aviv. But plenty of businesses remained open, and a major shopping mall was filled with customers.
Protesters waved signs outside the homes of some government ministers and blocked highways and key intersections throughout the country, bringing traffic in parts of Tel Aviv to a standstill. 'Everyone home now!' protesters shouted, staring down cars. One frustrated driver, an air-conditioning technician named Eli, who was on his way to work, got out of his car to try to negotiate with the protesters to move out of the way.
'War is terrible for everyone but we need to secure our lives here,' he said in an interview, speaking on the condition that his last name be withheld for fear of retaliation. 'It's either us or them,' he added of the Palestinians in Gaza, calling on Israel to 'eliminate them all, from young to old.'
'It helps Hamas, what they are doing,' he said of the protests Sunday. 'It doesn't help us. It disrupts our lives.'
Police said they would not allow protesters to block roads without 'proper authorization,' and in some places scuffled with and physically removed the demonstrators, according to videos circulating. By early afternoon, police had arrested 38 people, the spokesperson's unit said in a statement.
Government ministers came out against the strike, with some accusing protesters of doing Hamas's bidding.
'Those who today are calling to end the war without the defeat of Hamas are not only hardening Hamas's stance and pushing further away the release of our hostages, they are also ensuring that the atrocities of Oct. 7 will be repeated and that we will have to fight an endless war,' Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the start of a cabinet meeting Sunday.
'We are determined to carry it out,' he said of the decision to invade and occupy Gaza City. 'Together we are fighting, and with God's help, together we will complete the victory and end the war.'
Opposition politicians, however, voiced solidarity with the demonstrators. Opposition leader Yair Lapid, a member of the centrist Yesh Atid party, visited the main Tel Aviv protest to call for a hostage deal.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have stepped up their bombardment of Gaza City, residents and medics said, focusing their strikes on the southern neighborhood of Zeitoun, one of the city's largest. Emergency personnel and local media have in recent days reported intense bombing in the area, forcing much of the population out. Gaza's civil defense force described the strikes and shelling as 'relentless,' and said that ambulances have been unable to reach most of the people they say are trapped under the rubble.
In nearby al-Shifa Hospital, director Mohammed Abu Selmiya said dozens of injured and dead had arrived over the preceding 24 hours — including casualties from the shelling in Zeitoun and those who had been shot while trying to retrieve aid from humanitarian convoys at the Zikim border crossing in the north.
'The artillery, airstrikes and fire are almost constant. It's horrific, they never stop,' said Mohamed Orabi, 42, a dentist displaced from Zeitoun to the Rimal area in the western part of Gaza City. 'Sometimes it stops for ten minutes or so, then it starts again,' he said.
On Saturday, Israel announced that it was preparing to move people from combat zones to southern Gaza and that it would begin allowing humanitarian organizations to bring tents into the enclave to facilitate the move. U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said earlier this month Israel's operation would violate international law. It 'will result in more massive forced displacement, more killing, more unbearable suffering, senseless destruction and atrocity crimes,' he said in a statement.
Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv and Siham Shamalakh in Cairo contributed to this report.