Aug. 3 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Thousands of protesters have demanded yet another agreement on Saturday to release Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip, this time at a rally in front of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem.
“The time has come for an agreement and the time has come for elections,” said former diplomat Eran Etzion in his speech to the thousands of attendees during the march, according to the Israeli newspaper ‘The Times of Israel’.
Etzion said that an agreement had been “ready” for signature for a long time, but that Netanyahu was deliberately delaying negotiations for “political, personal and criminal reasons,” referring to the corruption cases that plague the president. “He is provoking a regional war in the worst possible initial circumstances, when Israel is weak, isolated and with a worn-out Israel Defense Forces,” he argued.
He has therefore called on the Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, and the top military commanders to pressure Netanyahu to accept the agreement. “Your time has come. The time has come to put your foot down and say: ‘You have no authority to kill the agreement or the hostages’,” he added.
Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, the traditional epicentre of the protests, hundreds of people took part in the demonstration and there were clashes with mounted police. Labour MPs Naama Lazimi and Gilad Kariv called on police officers not to charge the demonstrators after they blocked the intersection of Begin Street and Kaplan Street.
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