VSeveral protests called for this Sunday in Israel seek to paralyze the country to demand a truce agreement with the Islamist movement Hamas in Gaza to allow the return of the hostages kidnapped for nine months.
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The demonstrations began at 06:29 local time to commemorate the beginning of the attack of the October 7 launched by Hamas commandos in southern Israel.
Protesters blocked several streets in Tel Aviv for the second day in a row, an AFP journalist reported.
Many of them carried Israeli flags and chanted slogans demanding a deal to allow the return of the hostages, but also shouted for the resignation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
During the October 7 attack, Islamist militants kidnapped 251 people in southern Israel, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data. The Israeli army estimates that 116 people remain captive in Gaza, 42 of whom are believed to have died.
We are going to paralyze the country to tell our government that it is unacceptable that it does not reach an agreement for the hostages.
“We are going to paralyse the country to tell our government that it is unacceptable that they do not reach an agreement on the hostages,” Orly Nativ, a 57-year-old woman in Tel Aviv, told AFP on Sunday.
Other protesters chanted in Hebrew “We will not give up!” after several weeks of anti-government protests.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas erupted on October 7, when Islamist commandos killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 in southern Israel, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
In response, Israel launched an offensive in the Palestinian territory that has killed 38,153 people, most of them civilians, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, a territory ruled by Hamas.
Israel extends evacuation of borders with Gaza and Lebanon until August 31
Meanwhile, the Israeli government extended the evacuation of communities near the borders with Gaza and Lebanon until August 31, According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, after exchanges of fire with Palestinian militias and Hezbollah will force the displacement of some 125,000 Israelis between October and November 2023.
The measure, proposed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was approved “in view of the continuation of fighting and the operational and security implications arising from the assessment of the situation.”
Thus, the citizens of the settlements that are located in a strip of up to seven kilometers along Gaza or up to five kilometers along the border with Lebanon will continue to be displaced, with state funding, in the various hotels and residences where many have already been for about nine months.
The Prime Minister’s Office said the government is preparing measures to extend unemployment benefits for displaced people.
The extension came on the heels of budget cuts worth NIS 500,000 (about 124,700 euros) from the ministry, which will be redirected to fund the costs of the evacuation.
According to the Times of Israel, tens of millions of shekels will be cut from the Health, Welfare and Education ministries, although it did not specify specific amounts or possible cuts to other portfolios.
“We are at war. Just as no one thought of cutting funding for the Defense Ministry and the Army, no one should think of cutting funding for the National Security Ministry,” said the head of that ministry, the far-right Itamar Ben Gvir, protesting against a possible reduction in funding, according to Haaretz.
A representative of the Yesh Atid party (led by opposition leader Yair Lapid) told the paper that the move was the work of “a reckless government that is handing out funds at the expense of the middle class, reservists and taxpayers.”
More than 60,000 people have been forced to flee communities near the border with Lebanon, where the Shiite militia Hezbollah began firing rockets on October 8 in response to Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, around 70% of the 57,000 displaced people from towns near the Gaza border have been able to return home, while the rest continue to live in hotels or other nearby communities.
Several injured in northern Israel after an attack with more than 20 rockets from Lebanon
At least two people were seriously injured and two slightly injured on Sunday after several attacks with anti-tank missiles and rockets from southern Lebanon into northern Israel, amid escalating tensions with the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
The Israeli army confirmed that one soldier was slightly injured after two anti-tank missiles were fired at the town of Zar’it, near the border with Lebanon.
Israeli media said that in addition to the soldier, one Israeli citizen was slightly injured and one American seriously injured in the same incident, and that the military was investigating what two civilians were doing so close to the border.
In addition, according to the Magen David Adom emergency service, a 28-year-old man was in “serious condition” on Sunday after receiving shrapnel wounds in the Lower Galilee area in northern Israel.
“Some 20 projectiles were identified crossing from Lebanon into the Lower Galilee area, some of which were intercepted by air defence,” the army said in a statement.
The army also indicated that at dawn sirens sounded in response to a suspicious aerial target in the Ramot Naftali area, which was “successfully intercepted.”
Air raid sirens sounded in dozens of towns in the Upper and Lower Galilee regions in response to the rocket barrage, claimed by Hezbollah.
Shrapnel also caused fires in several locations in northern Israel and fire services are extinguishing fires near the Kidmat Galil industrial park, Kfar Zeitim, Lavi and HaZorim.
The rocket attack is likely a response to the death last night in an Israeli strike of the commander of the air defense of the Shiite militia Hezbollah, Maitham Mustafa Al Ataar, in Baalbek, in northeastern Lebanon, about 80 kilometers from the border with Israel.
Israel continues to bomb the Gaza Strip
Against this backdrop, the Gaza Strip has been subjected to deadly bombardment and fighting between Israeli troops and militants from the Palestinian Hamas movement continues nine months into the war and mediators have launched a new attempt to reach a truce.
Israel will send a delegation to Qatar in the coming days to continue indirect negotiations for a ceasefire, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said there were still gaps in reaching an agreement with Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007.
The Palestinian Red Crescent reported on Sunday that six people, including two children aged three and four, were killed in an Israeli bombardment of a house in Zawaida, in the central Gaza Strip, and in the north of the territory, three people died in an attack on a house, according to rescue teams and the Civil Defense.
The Nuseirat refugee camp — which was hit by a shelling of a UN-run school on Saturday that left 16 dead, according to the Hamas government — remains under Israeli fire.
Israel said its air force attacked “several terrorists” in the “Al Jauni school sector” of Nuseirat, which is run by the UN, on Saturday.
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