Thousands of Israelis joined protests across the country on Saturday night, demanding that Israel reach a comprehensive deal with the Hamas terror group to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of all remaining hostages, on the eve of a strike organized by the families of the captives in the hope of pushing the country into action.

The mass demonstrations were organized in the shadow of the defense establishment’s preparations to capture Gaza City, in the Strip’s north, as part of a plan that many relatives of the hostages and security officials have warned will further endanger the remaining living hostages.

Israel is forging ahead with the plans for an expanded military campaign in the Gaza Strip, even as reports have emerged in recent days that Hamas is expressing a newfound willingness to release some of the remaining 50 hostages in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who for many months had been pursuing the partial-deal framework, reiterated on Saturday night that Israel will only agree to a comprehensive deal if it meets Israel’s conditions for ending the war, which include demilitarizing the Gaza Strip and removing Hamas from power.

Yet officials familiar with the situation have warned that Israel’s demands mean that it will be difficult to broker a comprehensive deal in a short time period.

In addition to the main demonstrations in Tel Aviv, protests were held in Jerusalem, Haifa, Rehovot, and other major cities, and smaller ones were organized at junctions across the country.

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At the weekly anti-government protest outside the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, Einav Zangauker, mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, declared that the families of the hostages were done waiting for Netanyahu to “stop the war when it’s convenient for him.”

“Tomorrow we’ll stop the country,” vowed Zangauker, one of the key organizers of the planned nationwide strike. “We’ll stop the country tomorrow for our lives here, for our children, for the state of Israel,” she said. “We can’t take any more.”

“Tomorrow is only the beginning,” she promised. “We’ve stopped waiting for Netanyahu to stop the war when it’s convenient for him politically. We demand quiet, security, a future, and the end of the war.”

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Directly addressing the government’s actions and its plans to conquer Gaza City, Zangauker warned that “if we do not stop the decision to occupy the Strip, we will wake up to ‘permitted for publication’ notices about 20 hostages.”

News relating to the death of soldiers or hostages is usually published by Hebrew news outlets with the phrase “permitted for publication” at the top of the item.

Sunday’s strike has not been endorsed by the country’s powerful Histadrut labor union, but has nevertheless been backed by local municipalities, businesses across the country, universities, and various unions, including the Israel Airports Authority employees’ union.

Zangauker’s call was picked up by the relatives of other hostages, including Itzik Horn, who was speaking at the rally in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, which serves as an apolitical alternative to the more vocally anti-government protests held nearby.

Horn’s son Eitan is held captive in Gaza, and another of his sons, Iair, was released by the terror group in February.

“Tomorrow, Israel will come to a halt, and I call on everyone to participate,” he urged. “This is not a vacation day to pass time in the malls; it is a day to cry out.”

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“It is not just a day to empathize with the hostage families, but a civil demonstration to protect the State of Israel’s moral character,” said Horn.

He accused the government of neglecting the hostages, questioning how the cabinet could agree to expand the fighting in Gaza after “seeing the videos of starvation and the difficult testimonies of the hostages who were returned home, [describing] the immense suffering, the torture, the psychological terror.”

If Israel’s political leadership indeed decides to pursue its plan to take over Gaza City, Horn said, then, “why don’t they have the courage to go out publicly and announce their choice of my son Eitan’s death?”

“As we demonstrate, they accuse us of hurting our loved ones and playing into the hands of Hamas,” he continued. “[But] how does the conflict between the defense minister and the chief of staff help bring Eitan and the rest of the hostages back?”

“Why are they still in Gaza?” he demanded of the crowd, before answering his own question: “They are there because the leadership doesn’t want to return them home; the time has come to bring them back.”

‘Caught in a war he has no side in’

Pushpa Joshi, the sister of abducted Nepali agriculture student Bipin Joshi, also addressed the crowd at Hostages Square for the first time, having arrived in Israel last week.

There have been no signs of life from Joshi since he was abducted from Kibbutz Alumim on October 7, 2023, and Israel has said his status is unknown.

“My brother is a student who was caught in a war he has no side in. It took us 22 months to find the strength to come here,” said the captive’s 17-year-old sister, who arrived in Israel with her mother, Padma, last week after long months of campaigning and raising awareness in Nepal.

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WATCH: Pushpa Joshi, sister of Nepali hostage Bipin, spoke for the first time in front of thousands at Hostage Square. “Almost two years without a sign of life. Is he starving? Injured? Alive?” You’re so brave, Pushpa. We won’t give up. We’ll keep fighting until Bipin is home. pic.twitter.com/i5CGaqBG2E — Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 16, 2025

“We were isolated in Nepal, separated by language, culture, and fear. We focused on prayers for him, but prayers are not enough,” she said.

A number of protesters in the crowd were waving Nepali flags in solidarity with the two women.

Joshi hinted that the recent videos published by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas of hostages Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David, in which the two appeared emaciated and in dire health, acted as an impetus for their visit.

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She added that the footage “crushed us. My mom and dad are devastated, barely holding on.”

“Almost two years without a sign of life. Is he starving? Wounded? Alive?” she asked, struggling to speak through tears.

In their native Nepali, Joshi addressed her brother: “I miss you so much, brother. Don’t lose hope, be strong, stay alive.”

Maayan Sherman, whose son Ron was killed in captivity in November 2023, declared from the stage at Hostages Square: “Netanyahu and his defense minister [Yoav Gallant] knowingly chose to kill my son.”

On December 14, 2023, IDF troops recovered Ron’s body from a tunnel in northern Gaza along with those of Nik Beizer and Elia Toledano.

An IDF investigation published in September 2024 revealed that the three were killed on November 10, 2023, as a result of a “byproduct” of an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, likely indicating that they suffocated or were killed by carbon monoxide poisoning inside a tunnel. Ron’s family said he had asthma and needed an inhaler.

“I’m here as a bereaved mother and aunt, to save other mothers from the same fate,” said Sherman, explaining that her son had been used as a senior Hamas official’s human shield.

The government “chose to give up on our sons,” she said, castigating the government’s Gaza City plan.

“The guerrilla war in Gaza will cost much blood of our soldiers,” she continued, condemning the government as one “that sends the sons of others to death and is working just for personal and political motives.”

“The goals of destruction of Hamas and saving the hostages are contradictory,” she said. “Whoever chooses one gives up on the other.”

There must be an “immediate ceasefire and deal now,” she declared, or else the nation will “lose the future of our beloved state of Israel.”

‘Total moral destruction’

Dana Silberman Sitton, sister and aunt of the murdered hostages Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, implored the protesters to fight “apathy” as the war in Gaza drags on without an end in sight.

Warning that the government is “destroying Israeli society in the name of political survival,” Silberman Sitton vowed that “we’ll keep fighting the external enemy but also the internal apathy, and demand the most basic thing: justice, truth, and human life.”

“If the country doesn’t wake up now, it will wake up to a total moral destruction,” she cautioned.

The Bibas family, parents Yarden and Shiri, and young sons Ariel and Kfir, were taken hostage in the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre and became perhaps the most prominent faces of the hostages’ plight.

Yarden was released during a ceasefire earlier this year, and the bodies of his wife and children, who were murdered in captivity, were returned several weeks later.

PM’s office again rules out partial deal

Even as protesters demanded that Israel take immediate action to recover the remaining 50 hostages and save those who are still alive, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement on Saturday evening, declaring that Israel will only agree to a comprehensive deal “in accordance with our conditions for ending the war.”

These conditions, the PMO said, “include the disarming of Hamas, the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, Israeli control of the Gaza perimeter, and the installation of non-Hamas and non-Palestinian Authority governance that will live in peace with Israel.”

The statement came in response to multiple reports in recent days of ostensible Hamas flexibility and its possible willingness to return to the so-called “Witkoff proposal “ or a 60-day ceasefire-hostage deal, in which half the living hostages would be released, with provisions for negotiations on a permanent end to the war.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the lives of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May as a “gesture” to the United States. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.

In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 49 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.

Officers have found a man who went missing after two people were killed at sea off the coast of Jaffa earlier this evening.

He is alive and well, police say, after locating him on Aliyah Beach.

Police received a report of five people in danger at sea earlier this evening after four men, all part of the same family from East Jerusalem, attempted to rescue someone drowning in the water.

The rescuers soon found themselves in danger as they set out to save the man, amid high waves and turbulent winds. One of them was swept away into the sea, where he was reportedly hit by the propeller of a police boat.

Both the man hit by a propeller and the drowning man died, police and medics say.

Law enforcement officials say they are probing the “possibility that one of them was injured by the propeller of the marine police boat, due to the high waves at the time.”

Two others, a 13-year-old and a 19-year-old, were injured but managed to make it back to shore. Paramedics found both outside of water, bleeding and suffering from limb injuries. They were taken to the hospital for further treatment.

The Israel Port Authority has launched an investigation into the incident, police say.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich clashed with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir over the distribution of humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip during last night’s security cabinet meeting, according to leaked remarks.

According to the leaked remarks, the spat between the two men erupted after Defense Minister Israel Katz informed the cabinet that Israel would have no choice but to resume aid deliveries to the war-torn Gaza Strip within the next week or two, but must ensure that it does not reach Hamas.

Zamir, in response, is said to have told Katz that the military would not be responsible for distributing the aid.

Smotrich is said to have retorted to Zamir that “the army does not choose its missions,” and that the political echelon expects the IDF to be on top of aid distribution in order to ensure that none of the goods falls into Hamas’s hands.

“We have specified to you that you need to prepare for this. We will decide the goal and you will decide how to complete it,” says the finance minister. “If you are not capable, we will bring in someone who is capable. If you do not know how to do it, we will find someone who does.”

At this point, according to the leaked transcript, he is interrupted by lawmakers asking him to lower his tone, but continues: “We determined that no aid will reach Hamas, and I don’t care how that is done. If you don’t know how to do it, then say: ‘Political echelon, I don’t know.’ In a democracy, the army doesn’t select its missions.”

“You will not stand here and say to us, ‘I will not do it,’” the finance minister warns. “That will not happen. Only the political echelon decides what the mission is.”

Turning to the war at large, Smotrich is also said to have criticized Zamir for how it is being waged, telling him that Israel needs to move into a “decisive phase” regarding the future of the Strip.

“There is a new chief of staff, we waited, we were patient, and we have reached the moment in which we need to move on,” he says. “The war cannot continue as it is now, and it cannot go on forever.”

The CEO of the new Israeli and US-backed organization that was supposed to begin managing the distribution of humanitarian aid in Gaza in the coming days has resigned.

“I am proud of the work I oversaw, including developing a pragmatic plan that could feed hungry people, address security concerns about diversion, and complement the work of longstanding NGOs in Gaza,” says Gaza Humanitarian Foundation CEO Jake Wood in a statement.

“However, it is clear that it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon,” he adds.

GHF was created earlier this year as Israel tried to advance a new mechanism for distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza, while preventing its diversion from Hamas.

Israel wanted to create a small number of distribution sites in southern Gaza where pre-selected family representatives would be able to pick up a heavy box full of food for their families in a zone secured and operated by American private contractors.

While technically an American company, GHF was established in close coordination with Israeli authorities in order to manage the new aid initiative.

However, GHF still needed support and cooperation from existing humanitarian organizations as it sought to gain credibility on the ground. That backing has yet to come, though, with the UN and other international organizations in Gaza vowing not to cooperate with GHF, arguing that its aid initiative violated humanitarian principles by requiring Gazans to walk long distances in order to retrieve aid and limiting distribution to southern Gaza in what would forcibly displace the Palestinian population.

There were also questions about GHF’s funding, which has not been transparent, along with a memo it sent out to potential donors that named two individuals on its leadership who said they weren’t involved in the initiative and admitted to only being able to initially feed 60% of Gaza’s population.

Wood, a former Marine and social entrepreneur, tried to dispel concerns when he announced that Israel had agreed to GHF’s demands to allow for the establishment of additional distribution sites throughout Gaza and to restart the distribution aid through existing mechanisms last week until GHF is operational on the ground.

A senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel last week that GHF’s target date for beginning operations was this weekend, but that has not happened.

Further complicating matters, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said last week that in the third stage of Israel’s aid operations, distribution will be limited to a small area in southern Gaza that is secured by the IDF — in what would go against Wood’s assertion that he would not limit distribution to one part of the Strip.

Wood says he was approached about leading GHF two months ago due to his experience in humanitarian operations and stresses that he sought to “establish it as a truly independent humanitarian entity.”

“Like many others around the world, I was horrified and heartbroken at the hunger crisis in Gaza and, as a humanitarian leader, I was compelled to do whatever I could to help alleviate the suffering,” he adds.

Wood’s resignation marks a major blow to Israel’s effort to resume aid in Gaza on its own terms, and it’s unclear whether GHF will be able to march on.

His resignation is also likely to bury chances for GHF to be able to fundraise from countries abroad, as the reasons he gave for stepping down appeared to echo fears already voiced by the UN and international organizations already operating on the ground that were asked to cooperate with the foundation in order to ensure its success.

The American security contractors that GHF is working with already arrived in Israel earlier this month in order to enter Gaza and begin managing the distribution sites.

While Wood appeared willing to work within the strict provisions set up by Israel, his resignation statement indicated that his flexibility had reached a limit.

“I urge Israel to significantly expand the provision of aid into Gaza through all mechanisms, and I urge all stakeholders to continue to explore innovative new methods for the delivery of aid, without delay, diversion or discrimination,” he says.

“I continue to believe the only sustainable path for the long-term is for Hamas to release all hostages, for there to be a cessation of hostilities, and a pathway for peace, security, and dignity for all people in the region.”

Sasha Ariev, whose sister Karina Ariev was taken captive by Hamas terrorists from the Nahal Oz base where she was serving in the surveillance unit on October 7, tells The Times of Israel that the impending Iranian attack “doesn’t interest us.”

“I say to Iran and Hezbollah, ‘Go ahead, attack and let’s get it over with already’, so we can continue our battle to return the young women,” she says.

Karina Ariev is one of five young women taken hostage from the Nahal Oz army base, along with Liri Albag, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa and Naama Levy.

Sasha Ariev, about to turn 25, is a neurobiology student at Hebrew University. She paused her studies and work for the last 10 months to lead her family’s efforts in urging the government to move forward on a hostage deal.

The Arievs, along with the other families of the female hostages, are asking that the government begin any hostage release with the young women, one of the details that caused the last hostage agreement to fall apart, she says.

“I’m trying to be the backbone of the family, to hold everyone, to raise morale, to continue to function and not to give up,” said Ariev, who moved home to be with her parents after October 7. She speaks regularly in the Israeli and international media and meets with Israeli companies, groups and organizations to discuss the hostage situation.

Ariev’s parents, Albert and Ira Ariev, are struggling, says their elder daughter. They do not want to give up, but every day is a little bit harder, as they experience the helplessness of being unable to free their younger daughter from captivity, says Ariev, who organized a community event of prayer and solidarity in their Jerusalem neighborhood on August 5, to mark Karina’s 20th birthday in captivity.

“It doesn’t matter what I do each day because when I get into bed at night, at the end of a long day, I want to sleep but I can’t because my thoughts keep running,” said Ariev. “How can I sleep when we haven’t succeeded in bringing Karina and all the other hostages home? How can I sleep when I’m in my bed and she’s a hostage?”