Tens of thousands of protesters have arrived in Jerusalem after a five-day march from Tel Aviv to put pressure on the Israeli government for the immediate release of captives held by Hamas in Gaza.
An estimated 20,000 demonstrators, including family and friends of about 240 captives, held a rally in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s office on Saturday. They say the government has been ignoring their pleas to prioritise bringing their loved ones home.
The marchers walked for hours along the highway connecting the two cities, holding posters of the captives with the slogan “Bring them home now.”
They want to put pressure on the government “to do everything they can to bring the hostages back,” said Noam Alon, 25, clutching a photograph of his abducted girlfriend, Inbar.
“We are expecting them to meet with us, we are expecting them to tell us how they are going to do it,” he told the Reuters news agency. “We cannot wait any longer, so we are demand [ing] them to do that now, to pay any price to bring the hostages back.”
The captives were taken during the October 7 attack by the Palestinian group on southern Israel, which also left 1,200 people dead, mostly civilians. Since then, Israel launched a massive aerial and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip, which is under Hamas’s control, killing more than 12,000 people, also mostly civilians.
Source from www.aljazeera.com