ALBAWABA - On Saturday, hundreds of Israelis gathered in the middle of Tel Aviv to demand that the government make a deal right away to free the prisoners being held in Gaza. Newly leaked films from Palestinian resistance groups showed prisoners who were severely malnourished because Israel was still blocking the Gaza Strip. This made people want to protest.
Protesters met at "Hostage Square" and held a symbolic sit-in inside a barbed-wire fence to bring attention to the pain of their family members who are being held captive. A lot of people said that the government was ignoring the hostage situation for political reasons.
One mother of a hostage told Haaretz that the war and the pain of families could have stopped if the government hadn't chosen to keep it going. She said that when she told the person in charge of hostage situations that her son had turned into "skin and bone," they told her that this was "Hamas propaganda."
Channel 13 in Israel reports that when U.S. representative Steve Wietcuff visited the protest site, people met him with songs calling for the prisoners to be released right away. The Israeli Hostage Families Forum had earlier asked people to join the protest through X, stressing how important it was to reach a deal quickly.
Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades posted a video on Friday that showed Israeli hostage Avitar David sitting on a bed in a small room and looking very thin. On a separate note, Al-Quds Brigades of Palestinian Islamic Jihad posted video of Israeli soldier Rom Barslavsky begging for food right away:
"I'm not eating or drinking." I'm dying of hunger, so please bring me food.
The protests happened just a few days after Israel pulled out of informal truce and hostage talks in Doha, which were led by Qatar and Egypt and backed by the US. Reports say that Tel Aviv has become more firm in its demands for pulling troops out of Gaza, stopping the war, freeing Palestinian prisoners, and setting up ways to send aid to those in need.
Hamas has said again that it is ready to free all Israeli hostages in return for stopping the war, pulling Israeli troops out of Gaza, and freeing all Palestinian inmates.
