“Bring hostages home”: general strike in Israel against Netanyahu

Brussels – Not since before Oct. 7 last year, and before the ensuing war in the Gaza Strip, has Israel seen such a participatory protest. Over the weekend, tens of thousands of people flooded the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, while today (Sept. 2), the first nationwide strike in a year and a half is underway and could be extended. Protesters are calling on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept an agreement with the Hamas leadership and permit the return of hostages still alive following the discovery of six Israeli bodies in the Strip.

“Tomorrow, the entire nation will stop and unite in a common cry to bring back the hostages,” reads the statement released on Sunday (Sept. 1) by Histadrut, the country’s largest union representing some 800,000 workers. The announcement of the mobilization, which came through the voice of the union’s secretary, Arnon Bar-David, came during last night’s demonstration, organized in the Israeli capital by the forum of families of the hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7 attack. Bar-David reserved the right to consider an eventual extension of the strike beyond Monday.

Sunday’s protests were heavily attended partly because of the news, that same morning, of the finding of the bodies of six hostages in tunnels under the Palestinian town of Rafah in the south of the Strip. In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of people have gathered to call on the government to intensify negotiating efforts and bring home the dozens of hostages still alive—whose exact number is not known, but estimated to be around 70. Protesters displayed coffins to underscore the government’s responsibility for the hostages’ deaths, given the stalemate in negotiations with Hamas leaders that appears motivated more by internal political calculations within Bibi’s executive branch than pragmatic considerations. Crowds of protesters have also gathered outside the premier’s office in Jerusalem. In some cases, especially in Tel Aviv, there have been clashes with the police.

Thus, from 6 a.m. local this morning (5 a.m. Italian time), hundreds of thousands of workers crossed their arms in the most extensive strike carried out since March 2023, before the start of IDF military operations in the Strip. Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport was shut down for a few hours in the morning, while transportation and public services (including schools) were reportedly strongly curtailed. After all, the capital’s mayor himself, Ron Huldai, has publicly invited administration employees to participate in the strike.

While negotiations are essentially stalled due to the irreconcilable demands of the two sides, vaccinations have started in the Strip to prevent the outbreak of a polio epidemic among Palestinian children. The pause in fighting, limited only to certain areas and to a specific daily time slot, is expected to last three days and allow the vaccination of all children under ten years of age, who number over 640 thousand—an undertaking whose successful outcome is far from a foregone conclusion.

Meanwhile, violence continues in the occupied West Bank, where an ongoing large Israeli military operation is taking place, affecting several towns and already resulting in at least 15 Palestinians killed. All this after the Israeli government had pushed further on the accelerator of the illegal occupation in the Palestinian Territories last July in a move that prompted new sanctions by the Twenty-Seven.

EU High Representative for Foreign Policy Josep Borrell has formally proposed last Thursday (Aug. 29) to sanction the Ministers of Security (Itamar Ben-Gvir) and Finance (Bezalel Smotrich) in response to positions recently expressed by the two (both belonging to extreme right-wing parties on which Netanyahu’s government rests) regarding the need to stop the distribution of humanitarian aid in the Strip and the possibility, justifiable in “moral” terms, of starving the Palestinian population.​