Israel’s largest trade union organization, the Histadrut, announced this Sunday (1st) a general strike starting this Monday (2), which would include Tel Aviv’s international airport, in support of the protest movement that demands a truce with the terrorist group Hamas that allows the release of all hostages still in the Gaza Strip.
On Monday, Israeli protesters blocked several intersections and roads in the country early in the morning, as a starting point for the day of general strike.
“Tomorrow, starting at 6 a.m. local time (00:00 GMT), the Israeli economy will come to a standstill. At 8 a.m. (2 a.m.) the airport will be closed and takeoffs and landings will be suspended,” Histadrut Chairman Arnon Bar-David said in a statement on Sunday.
“I will not tolerate the abandonment” of the hostages, he added.
After a meeting with the families of the kidnapped, Bar-David assured that “an agreement [de trégua] is more important than anything else” and that the Israeli government did not sign it “due to political considerations.”
“We are receiving bags of bodies instead of an agreement. I have come to the conclusion that only our intervention can mobilize those who need to be mobilized,” he stressed.
The Israeli army confirmed on Sunday that the bodies it recovered on Saturday night (31) in a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip correspond to those of six hostages – four men and two women – that Hamas terrorists kidnapped during the massacre on October 7.
The confirmation fueled fury among the hostages’ families, who believe their loved ones would still be alive if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had signed a pact with Hamas, which most of his cabinet opposes.
According to information from the Israeli newspaper Times of Israelprotesters blocked highways and streets in Tel Aviv. Airport travel was also affected. Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport suspended flight departures for two hours, although they recently resumed.
In images released by organizers, more than 100 people can be seen at the Ra’anana intersection, in central Israel and about 15 kilometers from Tel Aviv, waving national flags while much of the traffic remains blocked.
An Israeli labor court ruled that the strike should end in the afternoon, a decision that, according to the Times of Israelwas accepted by the movement’s leaders.
On Sunday night, several people had already taken to the streets in Tel Aviv to protest against Netanyahu, demanding early elections and the signing of a truce agreement with Hamas that, according to reports, would allow the release of the 97 hostages who remain in Gaza, of which a third have already been confirmed dead.
Negotiations for a ceasefire that would allow the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza have fallen into a stalemate amid cross-accusations between the parties of adding new demands to the truce proposal that the United States presented in May.
Since the Middle East war broke out nearly 11 months ago, only a one-week truce was reached in late November 2023, which allowed the release of 105 hostages.
A minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party told the broadcaster on Sunday Channel 12 that the Prime Minister is concerned about the renewed anti-government protest movement, which reached its climax shortly before the outbreak of war on October 7, following the Hamas terrorist attack that resulted in 1,200 deaths and 251 kidnappings.
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