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Relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have protested and pitched their tents outside Benjamin Netanyahu’s house in Jerusalem after the Israeli prime minister rejected Hamas’s latest terms for their release.
On Sunday night, demonstrators holding placards and wearing T-shirts with messages including “Bring them home now!” called for the return of the roughly 130 hostages still held by Hamas, before camping outside Netanyahu’s residence.
The demonstration shows the mounting frustration among families of the hostages — who have now been held in Gaza for 108 days — and came shortly after Netanyahu issued a video in which he said he “utterly” rejected Hamas’s latest demands for freeing them.
“Hamas is demanding, in exchange for the release of our hostages, the end of the war, the withdrawal of our forces from Gaza, the release of the murders and rapists of the Nukhba (the Hamas unit that led the October 7 attack on Israel) and leaving Hamas in place,” Netanyahu said.
“Were we to agree to this, our soldiers would have fallen in vain.”
According to Israeli officials, Hamas captured about 250 hostages during their October 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and triggered the war.
In November, Hamas released 110 of the hostages as part of a deal mediated by Qatar, under which Israel and Hamas also agreed to a temporary ceasefire. In return, Israel allowed more aid into Gaza and freed 240 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons.
However, the fragile truce collapsed on December 2, and Israel resumed its offensive in Gaza, which has now killed more than 25,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, and displaced 1.9mn of the enclave’s 2.3mn inhabitants.
The latest effort to revive the hostage talks, led by Qatar, the US and Egypt, has focused on negotiating a “multiphase” agreement between Israel and Hamas that would include a longer truce, the release of all the hostages, and increased humanitarian aid into the devastated Gaza Strip.
The aim would be to use the truce to negotiate a permanent ceasefire, which Hamas is insisting on as part of any deal, according to a person familiar with the talks. The militant group had agreed to a multi-month temporary truce, but Israel was demanding a shorter timeframe, the person said. “It’s a back and forth between the parties,” the person said.
Israel’s war cabinet, which has overall responsibility for its campaign in Gaza, is split over the best way to bring home the hostages.
In a television interview broadcast last week, Gadi Eisenkot, one of the war cabinet’s five members, said it was time to “say bravely that it is impossible to return the hostages alive in the near future without an agreement (with Hamas)”, and that Israel should consider halting the fighting for a “significant” period of time as part of any such deal.
However, Netanyahu and defence minister Yoav Gallant have repeatedly argued that they believe the only way to bring the hostages home is by maintaining intense military pressure on Hamas.
Netanyahu reiterated this stance on Sunday, saying that “only total victory will ensure the elimination of Hamas and the return of all our hostages”.
He also insisted that once the war in Gaza was over he would demand “full Israeli security control of all territory west of the Jordan River” and would continue to resist the establishment of a Palestinian state, despite mounting international pressure for a two-state solution to the conflict.
“My insistence is what has prevented — over the years — the establishment of a Palestinian state that would have constituted an existential danger to Israel,” he said. “As long as I am prime minister, I will continue to strongly insist on this.”
