A coalition of hostage families and protesters against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's moves against the judiciary and parts of the security establishment is reuniting after war returned to Gaza this week.
The prime minister's decision to continue the war and bomb the Palestinian enclave, while another 59 hostages (about 24 are believed to be still alive) remain trapped in Gaza, has further inflamed the anger of protesters, who accuse the government of continuing the war for political reasons.
Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Tuesday evening, and new protests continued yesterday, after Netanyahu announced over the weekend that he had lost confidence in Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence service, and had decided to dismiss him.
"This is no longer a war fought for something important, but solely for the survival of this government, the survival of Benjamin Netanyahu," Koren Ofer, a protester in Jerusalem, told Reuters.
Protest groups include the Defense Shield Forum, which brings together former military and security officials, and the Movement for Quality Government in Israel, an anti-corruption group that was active during the fierce 2023 fight against limiting the powers of the Supreme Court, as well as the families of the hostages in Gaza.
The current protests are reminiscent of the large demonstrations that broke out in 2023, before the October 7 Hamas attack that triggered the Gaza war, when Netanyahu tried to remove then-Defense Minister Yoav Galant over his opposition to planned judicial reform.
This reflects the belief of Netanyahu's critics that the six-time prime minister poses a danger to Israeli democracy, Reuters writes.
“This government does not stop at red lights,” Yair Lapid, a former prime minister and leader of the centrist opposition party Yesh Atid, posted on the social media platform X. “Enough! I call on you all - this is our moment, our future. Take to the streets.”
While his right-wing coalition remains stable, Netanyahu has managed to defy protests and reject calls for new elections. Polls suggest he would lose the election due to enduring public discontent with the failures that allowed Hamas to attack southern Israeli communities on October 7, 2023, in Israel's worst security disaster.
Far-right Itamar Ben Gvir's announcement on Tuesday that he would return to the government, after leaving it over a ceasefire agreement signed in January, further solidified political support for the government from the nationalist-religious camp, whose support is crucial.
Netanyahu's critics saw his decision to dismiss the Shin Bet chief as a blow to a key state institution, inflicted for political reasons related to the Shin Bet's role in investigating corruption allegations against associates in Netanyahu's cabinet.
Netanyahu claims the charges are a politically motivated attack on him. He said he made the decision about Bar because he has long lost confidence in him as security chief.
Benny Gantz, leader of the largest centrist opposition party, said Netanyahu's decision to dismiss Barak represented "a direct threat to national security and the disintegration of political unity in Israel for political and personal reasons."
Netanyahu faces a lengthy trial on corruption charges, which he denies. Critics and political opponents regularly accuse him of using the security situation as a way to avoid legal problems.
The Israeli military said yesterday that its forces continued ground operations in the central and southern Gaza Strip, while airstrikes killed at least 20 Palestinians for a second day, according to local health workers.
The resumption of ground operations came a day after airstrikes killed more than 400 Palestinians, in one of the deadliest episodes since the start of the conflict.
The United Nations said an Israeli airstrike killed a foreign staff member and wounded five workers at the UN headquarters in central Gaza City yesterday. However, Israel denied this, saying it targeted a Hamas site, where it discovered preparations to fire rockets into Israeli territory.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a full investigation and condemned all attacks on UN personnel. He said the attack brought the number of UN colleagues killed in Gaza to at least 280 since 7 October 2023.
Israel and Hamas accuse each other of violating a ceasefire that began in mid-January and provided a brief respite for Gaza's 2,3 million residents after 17 months of war, which has reduced the enclave to rubble and forced most of the population to be displaced repeatedly.
Polls in Israel show that the majority of citizens want an end to the war and the return of the hostages.
However, bolstered by Ben Gvir's return, there are no indications that the protests could pose an immediate threat to Netanyahu's government, nor that they will reach the scale of the demonstrations that forced him to reverse his decision to dismiss Galant in 2023, according to a Reuters analysis.
Although he still lags in the polls, Netanyahu's position has gradually strengthened during the war. For now, at least, he appears to enjoy the support of US President Donald Trump's administration, which was consulted before the Israeli strikes.
Some families of the hostages have supported continuing the war. The radical group Tivka said on Tuesday that the only way to return all the hostages was a complete blockade of Gaza - cutting off electricity and water - and occupying the territory to bring down Hamas.
However, for other families of hostages and their supporters, the renewed fighting has further heightened fears for the future.
"I have no idea what will happen to the remaining hostages if the fighting continues in the coming weeks," said protester Iftah Brill, 45, from Tel Aviv. "This is an absolute disaster for us."
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