After the rescue of six dead Hamas hostages, pressure is growing at home and abroad on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and the release of all remaining hostages. Netanyahu asked for “forgiveness” on Monday evening for the failure to rescue the hostages, but wants to remain tough in the negotiations on the ceasefire agreement. In addition to participants in nationwide protests and a general strike in Israel, US President Joe Biden also criticized Netanyahu’s course.
“I ask you for forgiveness for not bringing them back alive,” Netanyahu said on Monday at a televised press conference about the six killed hostages. “We were close, but we did not succeed.”
Netanyahu vows revenge on Hamas
Hamas will pay “a very high price in the near future” for killing the hostages with shots “in the back of the head,” Netanyahu said. Instead of concessions, “maximum pressure on Hamas” is necessary. At the same time, Netanyahu assured that no one is trying harder to free the hostages than he is: “No one can teach me anything about that.”
Protests in Israel: “Confidence in Netanyahu’s policies is dwindling”
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With regard to the long-demanded ceasefire agreement, Netanyahu stressed that Israel must maintain control over the area on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. This will ensure that the remaining hostages “are not smuggled out of the Gaza Strip.”
Israel’s withdrawal from the so-called Philadelphia Corridor is one of the central points of contention in the negotiations, which aim not only at a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory, but also at the release of all remaining hostages abducted from Israel to the Gaza Strip.
Israel recovers six dead hostages
The six hostages now mourned were found in a tunnel near Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip on Saturday. According to the Israeli Ministry of Health, the four men and two women were “murdered by Hamas terrorists with several shots fired at close range approximately 48 to 72 hours” before their forensic examination on Sunday.
Large demonstrations followed on Sunday evening for an agreement to release the remaining hostages. The Histadrut trade union umbrella organization called for a general strike starting Monday morning, in which employees of administration, hospitals and transport companies across the country would stop working. Shops, restaurants, markets and schools were to remain closed. The Hamas hostages should no longer be “abandoned,” Histadrut head Arnon Bar David had previously declared.
The coastal cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa followed the call for a strike. The Jerusalem municipality, however, did not join the strike. At Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, all departures were completely suspended for two hours in the morning. Flight operations then returned to normal, an airport spokeswoman said.
Court ends strike
Local transport, partly operated by private companies, functioned at least partially. The strike was observed inconsistently in government agencies.
A few hours after the strike began, a labor court in Tel Aviv ordered the end of the strike because it was a “political strike.” The right-wing extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had obtained the court order with the argument that the general strike had nothing to do with a wage dispute and was therefore illegal.
Even after the strike ended, demonstrators continued to block important roads in Tel Aviv. As on the previous evening, thousands of protesters gathered again in the Israeli metropolis on Monday evening.
Funeral ceremony leads to protest rally
The funeral of 23-year-old US-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was one of the six hostages killed, also turned into a protest. Before Netanyahu, Israeli President Isaac Herzog asked for forgiveness on behalf of the government. “I apologize on behalf of the State of Israel for failing to protect you from the terrible disaster of October 7, for failing to bring you home safely,” he said to the thousands of mourners in Jerusalem.
Almost eleven months after the major Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, Israeli sources say 97 hostages are still being held by Hamas and other militant Palestinian groups, 33 of whom are presumed dead.
The Foreign Office assumes that there are still a low double-digit number of people with ties to Germany among the hostages. The Foreign Office condemned the murder of the six hostages now discovered on Monday evening in the online service X as “utterly unbearable”. All other hostages must be released and a humanitarian ceasefire must be reached in the Gaza Strip. “The deaths in Gaza must stop,” it continued.
Joe Biden criticizes Netanyahu
US President Biden answered “no” in Washington on Monday when asked whether Netanyahu was doing enough for such an agreement. The US, together with the other two mediating states, Egypt and Qatar, have been pushing for an agreement between Israel and the Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas for months.
Meanwhile, the British government announced that 30 of a total of 350 export licences for arms deliveries to Israel would be suspended. Foreign Minister David Lammy justified this by pointing to a “clear risk” that the weapons could be used in “a serious breach of international humanitarian law”.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
