Israelis protest Netanyahu government, call for ceasefire in Gaza

Thousands of Israelis protested, demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accept a ceasefire agreement with Hamas that would see the remaining Israeli hostages brought home from Gaza.

Saturday's rally in Tel Aviv that took place as Hamas officials were meeting Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Cairo, relatives and supporters of the more than 130 hostages still in captivity said anything possible had to be done to bring them home.

"I'm here today to support a deal now, yesterday," said Natalie Eldor.

"We need to bring them back. We need to bring all the hostages back, the live ones, the dead ones. We got to bring them back. We got to switch this government. This has got to end."

The protests, ahead of the Yom HaShoah Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls this year on May 6, came as the war in Gaza nears the end of its seventh month amid growing international pressure to stop the fighting.

"The only thing that keeps us going is the hope that Bar is alive and surviving," said Ora Rubinstein, the aunt of Bar Kupershtein, who was seized along with more than 250 others when a Hamas-led attack through Israeli settlements near Gaza on Oct.7.

Netanyahu's far-right govt presses for deeper invasion

Many of those taken hostage are believed to be dead but families want all of those taken to be brought back.

"Everyone must be returned. We will not abandon them as the Jews were abandoned during the Holocaust," said Hanna Cohen, an aunt of 27-year-old Inbar Haiman, who was initially believed to have been taken hostage on Oct. 7 but was subsequently found to have been killed.

Her body is still believed to be being held by Hamas in Gaza.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since an October 7 Hamas incursion which killed some 1,200 people.

Tel Aviv, in comparison, has killed more than 34,600 Palestinians and wounded nearly 78,000 amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities in the Palestinian territory.

Netanyahu's government has insisted that it will not stop the war until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are returned but intensive efforts are underway to secure a halt to the fighting that might lead to a full ceasefire.

However, Netanyahu faces pressure from far-right parties in his coalition to refuse a deal with Hamas and go ahead with the long-promised invasion against the southern Gaza city of Rafah.