Pressure has intensified on Israel to negotiate the release of more than 200 people held by Palestinian militants in Gaza, Ruth Michaelson, Julian Borger and Quique Kierszenbaum reported, with desperate families begging officials to help free their loved ones before an anticipated ground invasion.
An Israeli military spokesperson announced on Sunday that more than 212 people were held in Gaza, as officials worked to identify and locate those missing after a deadly incursion by Hamas on 7 October.
On Sunday evening, a group of families of those held hostage in Gaza met the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, at his residence in Jerusalem for almost two hours, as crowds gathered outside, singing songs of mourning.
“Don’t forget us,” one woman called to the crowd – a sea of yellow ribbons, Israeli flags and signs reading “bring them home”.
“The message from the president is that the whole leadership came together to resolve this crisis,” said Eyal Eshel, the father of 19-year-old Roni Eshel, who was serving at a military base near the border with Gaza. “I want to tell the only person that can resolve this, prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu: you recruited our girls, our request is you bring them home – all of them.”
Two activists from a Jewish-Arab peace movement were recently detained in Israel for putting up posters with a message that the police deemed to be offensive. The message was: “Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together.”
The activists, members of Standing Together, had their posters confiscated, as well as T-shirts printed with peace slogans in Hebrew and Arabic.
It was not an isolated incident. Across Israel, people are being detained, fired from their jobs, and even attacked for expressing sentiments interpreted by some as showing sympathy for Hamas after the group’s murderous attack on 7 October. The definition of pro-Hamas is often widened to include expressions of sympathy for the plight of Palestinian children trapped in Gaza, or calls for peace, especially if expressed in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Last week, after 15 years of service at a Petah Tikva hospital, its director of the cardiac intensive care unit was suspended from his position.
Abed Samara’s apparent offence was his profile picture on social media – a dove carrying an olive twig and a green flag emblazoned with the shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet.” He had adopted the picture last year, long before the Hamas attack, but it was nevertheless seen as somehow voicing support for the outrage.
