Newsman: Thousands of people took to the streets of Tel Aviv continues Tuesday for a new protest organized by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Anti-government demonstrators are gathering in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv for a second day of protests demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu conclude a cease-fire and hostage-release deal with Hamas.
Demonstration resumed in Tel Aviv on Monday gathering thousands protesting the deaths of six hostages. The event was led by the younger members of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum who are calling for a deal to bring all of the hostages home, the organization said.
Public anger flared on Sunday night with hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets, with some engaging in clashes with police. Authorities said 29 people were arrested in Tel Aviv, as protesters set fire to barricades and launched fireworks.
Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the continued failure of cease-fire and hostage-release talks.
“Whoever murders hostages – does not want a deal,” the prime minister said in a statement released on Sunday. “Hamas is continuing to steadfastly refuse all proposals.”
The current wave of demonstrations was sparked by the recovery of the bodies of six hostages from a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday — among them American Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin. The Israel Defense Forces said the captives were killed by militants “shortly” before their discovery.
The killings prompted fury in Israel, where some place blame for the deaths on Netanyahu’s months-long failure to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid said in a statement while expressing his support for the general strike: “They were alive. Netanyahu and the death cabinet decided not to save them. There are still live hostages there, a deal can still be made. Netanyahu is not doing it for political reasons.”
Street protests were expected to resume across the country, coinciding with a general strike called by Israel’s largest trade union — Histadrut, or the General Organization of Workers in Israel, which has hundreds of thousands of members — which has caused disruptions to services in some areas of the country. Airlines operating out of Ben-Gurion International Airport temporarily halted some flights on Monday morning due to the strike, according to the airport authority.
