No one among the families of the hostages held in Gaza would have imagined being faced with this symbolic deadline that is difficult to name: “half a year”, “six months” or, as it was decided to describe it this evening of Sunday April 7 , “one hundred and eighty-four days” – those that have passed since October 7, 2023, the date of the Hamas attack, with the atrocities, the 1,200 deaths and the more than two hundred hostages taken to Gaza. After a series of releases in November, 129 people are still detained in the enclave, of whom thirty-four are considered dead.
For this date, an appointment was made in front of the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament, towards the west exit of Jerusalem, by the Forum of Families of Hostages and Missing Persons, which thus marked its intention to change strategy to push the government to conclude an agreement with Hamas, and obtain the release of theirs. Six months ago, a “hostages square” was improvised in Tel Aviv, in front of the Art Museum, not far from the Kiryat headquarters which houses the country’s highest military authorities. From now on, the movement says it wants to intensify its action in Jerusalem, particularly around Parliament.
“We don’t know what to do anymore”
The demonstrators, Sunday evening, came with their families. Many of them parked their cars in the parking lot of the nearest shopping center, Cinema City, with its kitsch decoration and fast food restaurants. They took out their Israeli flags, carefully folded since the last mobilization, brandished their signs with photos of their loved ones – so alive, so smiling – before regrouping at nightfall, not far from the empty Parliament.
The previous Tuesday, when the families’ group had decided to organize four days of demonstrations in front of the Knesset, demonstrators forced their way into the building, during an incursion which took them to the public gallery, whose protective windows they smeared with yellow paint. This yellow of the ribbons calling for the release of the hostages, visible everywhere in Israel from October 8, 2023, is tending to disappear.
In Jerusalem, on the occasion of this “184e day in hell”, as many call it, the demonstrators are numerous. In addition to the hostages’ relatives and families, there are sympathizers there, people angry with the government or anxious to show their emotion. It is not a mass movement, but a slow evolutionary process which increasingly pushes demonstrators towards contesting the power of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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