Snippets:
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Tens of thousands of grieving and angry Israelis surged into the streets Sunday night after six more hostages were found dead in Gaza, chanting “Now! Now!” as they demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach a cease-fire with Hamas to bring the remaining captives home.
The mass outpouring appeared to be the largest such demonstration in 11 months of war and protesters said it felt like a possible turning point, although the country is deeply divided.
Israel’s largest trade union, the Histadrut, further pressured the government by calling a general strike for Monday, the first since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that started the war. It aims to shut down or disrupt major sectors of the economy, including banking, health care and the country’s main airport. (snip-MORE)
(Meanwhile, democracy in Israel doesn’t seem to be the system anymore, US Republicans’s statements regardless-) (This narrative runs current to the top. There’s a good feature at the bottom here.)
Arnon Bar-David, the chair of Histadrut Labour Federation, Israel’s main trade union which launched the strike, said he respects the decision by the labour court to end the strike at 14:30 (local time) 12.30 BST, according to the Times of Israel.
It reports him saying in a statement:
It is important to emphasise that the solidarity strike was a significant measure and I stand behind it. Despite the attempts to paint solidarity as political, hundreds of thousands of citizens voted with their feet.
I thank every one of you – you proved that the fate of the hostages is not right-wing or left-wing, there is only life or death, and we won’t allow life to be abandoned.
Meanwhile, the newspaper reports that the Hostages and Missing Families Forum encourages the public to continue the demonstrations despite the ruling. “This is not about a strike, this is about rescuing the 101 hostages that were abandoned by [prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu with the cabinet decision last Thursday,” the forum says, referring to the vote by ministers backing the IDF’s continued presence on the Philadelphi Corridor.Share
Updated at 08.11 EDT
The labour court’s ruling that today’s strike must end was welcomed by Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich.
In a post on X, Smotrich praised the decision to end what he called a “political and illegal strike.”
The Times of Israel reports he said in his statement that Israelis went to work today “in droves,” proving they are no longer slaves to “political needs.”
He added: “We won’t allow harm to the Israeli economy and thereby serve the interests of [Yahya] Sinwar and Hamas.”
‘Strike was not as powerful as people expected’ – dispatch from Tel Aviv
Julian Borger
Julian Borger is the Guardian’s world affairs editor
Tel Aviv this morning did not feel like a society about to bring its government down.
The debris had been removed from last night’s demonstration on the Ayalon Highway, the motorway which passes through the city centre, and traffic was moving normally.
Protesters stopped traffic at a couple of junctions around the city but for the most part, the traffic flowed. The national rail line was working, though some buses and light railway lines stopped.
Private companies gave their staff the day off, but it was more in the spirit of some sombre holiday rather than the start of an existential struggle with the government.
Ben Gurion airport only closed for a few hours, and it was announced that the whole general strike would end at 6pm. It is not government-ending stuff.
The mood can best be described as bitterly realistic on Hostages Square, the name given to the plaza between the national library and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where hostage families and their supporters gather every day.
“I’m not sure the strike was as powerful as people expected,” said Debbie Mason, a social worker for the Eshkol regional council, the area of southern Israel abutting Gaza.
She made a distinction between what she hoped would happen and what she believed would happen, the latter being that nothing would change for the hostages.
“Unfortunately, there are too many things that are going to obstruct a deal, whether it’s on our side, whether it’s on Hamas’ side, it just doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interest, that something should happen,” Mason said.
Rayah Karmin, who comes from Mabu’im, a village near Netivot, near the Gaza border, agreed that a one-day strike would change little.
“Only a longer strike will make the people in government understand that the economy of Israel is going to go down,” Karmin, a vitamin supplement salesperson, said.
She pointed out that all the demonstrations and strikes were up against an immovable political fact. If a ceasefire is agreed, the far-right members of the coalition, notably Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, will walk out and the government will fall.
“Smotrich and Ben-Gvir will leave Netanyahu, and then he will be without a coalition, and he will have to go home,” Karmin said. “And he knows that next time he won’t be elected, so he wants to stay as long as he can.”
“Bibi is a magician, a really big fucking magician,” Aaron, a 28-year-old legal adviser in a pharmaceutical corporation, said. He had been out on the streets for Sunday’s mass protests, but he had no illusions about who they were up against.
“If there’s a hostage deal, the government will fall, so they are not interested in a deal,” Aaron said. “What Ben-Gvir wants and what Smotrich wants, they get, because Bibi doesn’t want to go to jail. He doesn’t want to lose power, because Bibi will be voted out in the first election if the government falls.”
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