On January 18, thousands of people demonstrated in the Israeli capital, Tel Aviv, demanding the return of prisoners from Gaza and early elections to oust Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Demonstrators marched to the city’s Habima Square, with some calling for “sudden elections” calling Netanyahu the “face of evil.”
Protesters demanding early elections and the return of prisoners also gathered outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Haifa and occupied Jerusalem.
Netanyahu is under intense pressure to return Israeli citizens captured by Hamas on October 7 after Hamas announced the deaths of two more prisoners on Monday.
Ovi Shamriz, the father of prisoner Alon Shamriz, who was killed by Israeli soldiers, told AFP in Tel Aviv that Netanyahu’s war cabinet was headed for disaster.
He said that the way we are doing, all the prisoners will die. It is still not too late to release them.
Netanyahu’s government has been criticized by rival politicians and critics for its handling of the war. In addition, there have been large-scale demonstrations in occupied Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for the release of Israelis imprisoned by Hamas.
“We already lost the war on October 7 when these people were taken prisoner. We want our family, our taken prisoners, to come back home,” said a lawyer among the protesters.
In a briefing on the evening of January 20, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Haghri said, “Soldiers have found a tunnel in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip where some prisoners were kept. We have found evidence indicating the presence of prisoners.”. This evidence also included the paintings of a five-year-old prisoner.
He said that “about 20 prisoners” were kept in the tunnel at different times. In difficult conditions without daylight. In low oxygen and terrible hubris.
Haghri said the soldiers entered the tunnel where they encountered the militants and engaged in a fight in which “the militants were killed.”
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