Hostage Families demand Deal, Netanyahu Resignation, in Largest Demonstrations since Oct. 7
Juan Cole 06/23/2024
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Saturday evening witnessed the biggest Israeli demonstrations against the government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since the outbreak of war on October 7, 2023, according to the Israeli press as summarized by Al Jazeera. Some 150,000 are said to have rallied in Tel Aviv alone. They demanded that the prime minister resign.
Some demonstrators actually set a fire in front of the headquarters of the ruling Likud Party, which Netanyahu heads.
The first nine months of 2023 saw regular massive rallies against Netanyahu and his cabinet, which includes elements that are the Israeli equivalent of neo-Nazis. The horrid Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas caused Israelis to pull together and the demonstrations ceased for a long time, with a war cabinet having been formed that included opposition members. Earlier in June, however, Benny Gantz resigned from the war cabinet, essentially a government of national unity, and Netanyahu has now dissolved it. Gantz, a retired general, leads the centrist opposition National Unity Party.
On Saturday Gantz joined in a demonstration in the town of Kiryat Gat in the Southern District, demanding a hostage deal.
Some of the renewed opposition derives from Netanyahu’s refusal to cease bombing Gaza long enough to conclude a hostage exchange agreement with Hamas. The terrorist organization continues to hold an estimated 120 Israelis who were taken hostage on October 7, a mixture of civilians and military, of men and women, and of Israelis and guest workers (some from Thailand).
The families with members who remain prisoners in Gaza’s tunnels have concluded that there is not hope of a hostage deal as long as the current extremist government remains in power. At a news conference near the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv, hostage families announced that Netanyahu’s government has to fall before the hostages can be brought out.
Channel 13 carried an interview with hostage families who asserted that Netanyahu does not want a hostage deal because he knows that their return would signal the fall of his government.
Al Jazeera English Video: “‘All of the rats in the Knesset’: Mass antiwar protest in Israel”
Netanyahu is on trial for corruption and were he to lose the position of prime minister and become a civilian again, the trials would go forward and he could be jailed. One of his predecessors as prime minister, Ehud Olmert, went to prison for corruption. The Israeli prosecutors and police don’t play.
President Joe Biden told an interviewer that it would be legitimate to suspect that Netanyahu carries on the nine-month Gaza campaign because he wants to remain in power.
Warrants have been sought against Netanyahu for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
Netanyahu’s maximalist goal of “destroying Hamas” was brought into question this week by military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, who said, “Hamas is an idea, Hamas is a party, it is embedded in the hearts of people. Whoever thinks that we can make Hamas disappear is mistaken. It is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been in this area for a great many years.” He said the most you could do is set up an effective rival to it that would provide aid to people and then publicize that this alternative, not Hamas, was doing effective charity work.
Hagari said that anyone who spoke about destroying Hamas was deceiving the public.
That assertion seemed to many observers a not very veiled reference to Netanyahu.
Yediot Aharanot columnist Nadav Eyal wrote in mid-June, “The IDF believes that the tactical achievement allows Israel to ‘pass a phase,’ and in fact to end the war in Gaza through an agreement to return the kidnapped. ‘The end of the war is not the end of the fighting,’ say security officials, ‘the intelligence will continue to flow and so will the possibility of attacking from the air or from the ground.” [Google translate.; h/t for cite BBC Monitoring.]
This increasing split between the extremist government, with its fascist elements that insist on a forever war in Gaza, and the Israeli officer corps, is momentous and perhaps gives the protesters hope.
However, in a parliamentary system Netanyahu can stay in power until 2026 as long as his coalition retains a majority and he can avoid a vote of no confidence. Israeli civil society is too weakened by decades of Likud Party Neoliberalism to intervene effectively.