(Tel Aviv) Thousands of people gathered in the streets of Tel Aviv on Thursday evening around the families of hostages held captive in the Gaza Strip to mark 300 days since their abduction.
“No victory without the return of the hostages,” chanted the demonstrators, wearing yellow T-shirts with the words “agreement or surrender” and carrying portraits of their loved ones.
The Hostage Families Forum, which represents some of the relatives kidnapped on October 7, called for the march and then a rally in Tel Aviv, under the title “Enough, we demand an agreement.”
On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza into southern Israel carried out an attack that killed 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data. Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 111 are still being held in Gaza, including 39 who died, according to the army.
In response, Israel launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip that has so far killed 39,480 people, according to data from the Hamas-run Gaza government’s health ministry, which does not provide details on the number of civilian and combatant deaths.
PHOTO ILAN ROSENBERG, REUTERS
300 lanterns are released into the sky.
“Today marks 300 days since more than 1,200 innocent people were brutally murdered and hundreds kidnapped in Gaza,” the Families Forum wrote in a statement.
“Among the hostages are two young children: Kfir Bibas, who was only nine months old when he was abducted and has now spent more time in captivity than in freedom, and Ariel Bibas, who will celebrate his fifth birthday in captivity this Monday,” the Forum added.
“Speculations”
“We call the Prime Minister [Benyamin] Netanyahu and the Israeli government to sign the agreement that you proposed and which was approved by the president [américain Joe] Biden,” the statement said.
Talks on a ceasefire linked to the release of hostages, planned for last week in Qatar, had been postponed, according to a source close to the negotiations.
For Emmanuel Navon, professor of political science at Tel Aviv University, “everything we hear about a possible agreement on the hostages is just speculation because apart from the negotiators, we don’t know much and we don’t know if we were really close to an agreement before the elimination” of Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader killed Wednesday in Tehran in a strike blamed on Israel.
“It is also unclear whether Israeli military pressure is bringing the release of the hostages closer than negotiations,” Navon added in an interview with AFP.
Netanyahu announced Thursday evening that he was holding consultations about the hostages with security officials, according to a statement from his office.
“I can’t believe it’s 300 days after” the hostage-taking, Osnat Sharabi-Matalon, whose two brothers, Eli and Yossi, were taken hostage at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, told AFP. One of them was reported dead by Israel.
Popular singers took to the stage between interventions by relatives of the hostages, all calling for the release of the hostages “now”.