After six hostages died in Gaza on Sunday, Israel saw widespread protests as anger over the government’s inability to negotiate a cease-fire agreement that would release Israeli prisoners grew.
Protesters in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and other cities, reported by Israeli media to number as high as 500,000, demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take more action to free the other 101 hostages, of whom Israeli officials assume to be dead.
Demonstrators in Jerusalem stopped roads and staged demonstrations in front of the prime minister’s home. The main roadway in Tel Aviv was crowded with demonstrators waving flags bearing images of the captives who had died, according to aerial footage.
Police were seen shooting demonstrators who had barricaded roadways with water cannons in Israeli television footage. 29 arrests were reported by the local media. Labor leaders declared a one-day nationwide walkout on Monday.
At the same time as a polio vaccination campaign was launched in the war-torn Palestinian enclave and rioting erupted in the occupied West Bank, the Israeli military announced the recovery of bodies from a tunnel in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, a military spokesman, informed reporters that the bodies of the hostages Carmel Gat, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi, and Ori Danino had been returned to Israel.
A spokesman for the Israeli health ministry said that a forensic investigation revealed they were “murdered by Hamas terrorists in a number of shots at close range” 48–72 hours earlier.
Netanyahu declared that Israel will not stop until it apprehended those responsible for the nearly 11 months of fighting, in response to rising calls for a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages. “Whoever murders hostages – does not want a deal,” he stated.
Senior representatives of Hamas claimed that the deaths were caused by Israel’s failure to sign a ceasefire accord.
