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| Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90 |
The main protest in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square began with a screening of a video showing Israeli hostage Evyatar David. According to the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, 60,000 demonstrators participated in the rally.
Earlier hostage families issued a statement outside the army headquarters in Tel Aviv accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of derailing the negotiations. Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held captive in Gaza, said “We understand that the briefings by the ‘political official’ two days ago about a comprehensive agreement are empty slogans because the threshold conditions that Israel is setting are unrealistic and have no real feasibility.” A silent protest vigil also took place on Saturday evening in Tel Aviv’s Charles Clore Park, with hundreds of demonstrators carrying photos of Palestinian murdered in Gaza.
Hadash MK Ayman Odeh, who recently survived a fascist attack at Nes Ziona and an attempt to oust him from the Knesset, said “There is no military solution. There never was a military solution, and there never will be! Between the river and the sea, there are two peoples, and neither of them will vanish. Whether we like it or not, our fate is intertwined. Because we were not meant to die together; we were meant to live together!” Speaking during a demonstration at Alonim Junction, in northern Israel’s Jezreel Valley, Odeh said the Israeli occupation army actions in Gaza constitute crimes against humanity.
According to Odeh, the genocidal war has become a “cruel exploitation of October 7 to implement plans against Gaza, based on messianic ideas of transfer and resettlement on its ruins – and the means are murder, massacre, and deliberate starvation.” “The real struggle is between fascism and democracy, between supremacy and absolute equality, and between occupation and freedom for all – and now between continued murder and death and an end to the war and a comprehensive deal,” he added.
Several hundreds of Arabs and Jews gathered against war, starvation and genocide in Gaza on Thursday and Friday at Jaffa, Nazareth, Kaukab Abu al-Hija, Kabul, Hemed Junction near Jerusalem, Baqa al-Gharbiyye, Tyra, Taybe, Kufr Yassif, Tamra and other localities by appointment of the High Follow-up Committee, the Arab community umbrella group in Israel. In Haifa, police officers arrested 14 activists.
On Friday, the well-known Israeli author David Grossman has joined a growing number of Israelis and Israeli organizations saying that Israel is carrying out a genocide in Gaza. Grossman is a longtime left-wing peace activist whose son, a soldier was killed in Lebanon in 2006, told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, “For many years I refused to use this word,” he said. “But now, after the images I’ve seen, what I’ve read, and what I’ve heard from people who were there, I can’t help but use it. How did we come to be accused of genocide?” Grossman said. “Just uttering that word – ‘genocide’ – in reference to Israel, to the Jewish people, that alone, the fact that this association can even be made, should be enough to tell us that something very wrong is happening to us.”
The ongoing Israeli war on Gaza since October 2023 has so far resulted in at least 60,430 documented Palestinian fatalities, with over 148,722 others injured. Thousands of victims are feared trapped under rubble, inaccessible to emergency and civil defense teams due to Israeli attacks. Israel’s genocidal attacks continue unabated despite calls from the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and directives from the International Court of Justice urging measures to prevent genocide and alleviate the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.
