Israeli society is mobilizing this Monday, September 2, to force the government led by Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement with Hamas to release the hostages held in the Gaza Strip since Saturday, October 7, 2023.
A major general strike began this Monday, September 2 in Israel in order to force the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement to release the hostages held in Gaza by Hamas since Saturday, October 7, 2023. On that day, 251 people were kidnapped: 97 are still being held in Gaza, including 33 declared dead by the army.
Israeli reprisals have left more than 40,000 dead according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, including many civilians, women and children. The Israeli army has been relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip for more than ten months, causing a humanitarian and health disaster denounced by the UN.
In the latest rounds of negotiations in Cairo, Egypt, neither the Palestinian Islamist movement nor the far-right Israeli government have given way on their positions. The proposals of the American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators have all been rejected.
After Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements on Sunday, September 1, hopes for an agreement have once again faded. “He who kills hostages does not want an agreement” on a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, the Israeli Prime Minister insisted.
Protests across the country this Monday
Since the discovery this weekend of the bodies of six hostages killed at close range in the Gaza Strip, Israeli society has been mobilizing to stop “this abandonment of hostages.” Huge demonstrations were organized this Sunday, with hundreds of thousands of people gathered in Tel Aviv.
And Arnon Bar-David, head of the Histadrut, the main trade union confederation in Israel, announced the start of a general strike starting this Monday, 6 a.m. local time (5 a.m. in Paris). “At 8 a.m., the airport will be closed, takeoffs and landings will cease,” the powerful trade union center said in a statement.
Demonstrations are also planned in several cities across the country starting at 7 a.m., announced the Forum of Families of Hostages and Missing Persons, an association also known as “Bring Them Home Now” and which supports the Histadrut’s call for a strike.
Shops will remain closed on Monday, hospitals will operate at a reduced capacity, and in Tel Aviv, Mayor Ron Huldai, a former Labor Party member, is calling for support for the protesters. Kindergartens across the country will be closed, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has also announced it is joining the movement.
“It’s about putting pressure on the government to tell it: ‘Sign an agreement now,'” Benjamin Petrover, I24 News correspondent in Paris, told BFMTV. “It’s a dark day ahead,” he said, adding that part of Israeli society does not support the movement.
Our colleagues at CNN report that Benjamin Netanyahu is “concerned” by this mobilization of Israeli society.
His Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who had declared at the beginning of August that “letting people die of hunger” the people of the Gaza Strip could “be justified and moral,” wrote to the country’s attorney general seeking an injunction against the strike. The government “will not accept a surrender agreement that would endanger Israel’s security,” the minister also warned, according to comments reported by i24 News.
Since the beginning of 2024, several demonstrations have been organized in Israel to demand an agreement to release the hostages. But the discovery of six bodies this weekend seems to have tipped this protest movement into another dimension.
At least four hostages were buried, in the presence of grieving relatives. “You were abandoned, every day, every hour, 331 days (…) you were sacrificed to ‘destroy Hamas’,” Nira Seroussi lamented in her funeral eulogy for her son, Almog.
Related News :