Benjamin Netanyahu has repeated Israeli threats to seize territory in Gaza if Hamas refuses to release the remaining Israeli hostages, as, for the second consecutive day, hundreds of Palestinians joined protests against the militant group and demanding the end of the war.
The Israeli prime minister’s warning came a week after Israel resumed its military operation in the territory, shattering the relative calm of a January ceasefire with Hamas.
“The more Hamas continues in its refusal to release our hostages, the more powerful the repression we exert will be,” Netanyahu told a hearing in parliament, which was occasionally interrupted by shouting from opposition members.
He added: “I say this to my colleagues in the Knesset, and I say it to Hamas as well: this includes the seizure of territories, along with other measures I will not elaborate here.”
Hamas warned on Wednesday that hostages may be killed if Israel attempts to use its military to retrieve them. “Every time the occupation attempts to retrieve its captives by force, it ends up bringing them back in coffins,” the group said in a statement.
Of the 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 that the Israeli military says are dead.
For the second consecutive day, hundreds of Palestinians have joined protests in northern Gaza, shouting anti-Hamas slogans and calling for an end to the war with Israel, in a rare display of public anger against the militant group.
On Tuesday, videos and photographs shared on social media, which appeared to be authentic, showed hundreds of people, mostly men, chanting: “Hamas out” and: “Hamas terrorists” in Beit Lahiya.
Some protesters were seen carrying banners emblazoned with slogans including: “Stop the war” and: “We want to live in peace”. At least one appeal to join the protest was circulating on the social media network Telegram.
“I don’t know who organised the protest,” one man told Agence France-Press. “I took part to send a message on behalf of the people: enough with the war.” He said he had seen “members of the Hamas security forces in civilian clothing breaking up the protest”.
A statement released by family elders from Beit Lahiya expressed support for the protests against Israel’s offensive and its tightened blockade. They also said the community fully supported armed resistance against Israel and rejected “any attempt to exploit legitimate popular demands by a fifth column”, apparently referring to opponents of Hamas.
In a separate development on Wednesday, at least nine Palestinians were killed by two separate Israeli airstrikes in central Gaza, medics said.
One strike hit a group of Palestinians gathered outside a charity providing hot meals in the Nuseirat refugee camp. At least five people, including a woman and her adult daughter, were killed by the strike, according to the al-Awda hospital, which received the casualties.
The resumption of Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip had displaced 142,000 people in seven days, the UN said on Wednesday, warning of dwindling stocks of humanitarian aid.
“In just one week, 142,000 people have been displaced,” the spokesperson for the UN secretary-general, António Guterres, said, adding that about 90% of Gaza’s population had been displaced at least once between the start of the war on 7 October 2023 and January of this year.
There has been no sign that Israel will open entry points to allow essential aid to flow or ease its new offensive.
The Gaza health ministry said more than 50,000 Palestinians had been killed in Gaza and another 113,408 wounded since the beginning of the war.
AFP, Reuters and AP contributed to this report
