Hostages Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher have crossed on Sunday, January 19, the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel, after 471 days in Hamas captivity. On Saturday, tens of thousands of people demonstrated across Israel, against war and urging the far-right government to commit fully to the hostage release-ceasefire deal with Hamas, some 12 hours before it was set to begin.

Israeli peace activists protest march calling to end the war in Gaza during and for the release of Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip near Paris Square in Jerusalem, January 18, 2025 (Photo: Yonatan Sindel / Flash 90)
The deal, signed Friday by Israeli and Hamas negotiators in Qatar and approved by the government in the early hours of Saturday, is to be implemented in three stages. During the first 42-day phase, Hamas will release 33 Israeli hostages — alive and dead — while Israel is to release up to 1,904 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in return. The first 90 Palestinian prisoners set to be released in exchange for three hostages held by Hamas include 69 women, among them Khalida Jarrar, 62, a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). New York-based Human Rights Watch said her repeated arrests are part of Israel’s wider crackdown on nonviolent political opposition. Also listed for release is Abla Abdelrasoul, 68, the wife of detained PFLP General Secretary Ahmad Saadat.
In Tel Aviv, the epicenter of the protest movement, two simultaneous protests are held each week, one of which, held outside the Begin Road entrance to the Israeli army headquarters, is an anti-government demonstration. As the protest began on Saturday evening, attendees marched from Kaplan Street to the nearby Begin Road in a massive human column, chanting, “The government is criminal!” as they went.
“We are all hostages of the government of blood!” they chanted as they stood outside the army headquarters. An activist standing overhead on a pedestrian bridge read the names of the 98 hostages still in captivity in Gaza. after each name, protesters responded with a cry of “Now!” Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan was abducted by Hamas from his Kibbutz Nir Oz home, accused “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and the extremists in the government” of working to prevent the agreement’s full implementation. She further charged that Netanyahu was making promises to Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that “contradict the commitment to end the war and endanger the agreement.”
Smotrich, who voted against the deal, said earlier on Saturday that the prime minister had agreed to his demands for Israel to return to fighting Hamas after the first phase of the deal, stage a “gradual takeover of the entire Gaza Strip” and cut off access to humanitarian aid. According to Hadash MK Ofer Cassif, “To prevent Smotrich from resigning his government, Netanyahu promised him to return to an intense war in Gaza at the end of the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, and to add the ‘security in the West Bank’ as an official objective of the war. That, of course, means more settlements, more settlers terrorism and pogroms, and, eventually, the ‘Gazaization’ of the occupied West Bank – yet another, even more bleeding genocide. The world must act NOW to prevent those catastrophes beforehand.”
Alongside the demonstrations in Tel Aviv, thousands of people came together in Jerusalem to demonstrate in support of the deal and against war. Other demonstrations were held in Haifa, Beer Sheva, Rehovot, Kfar Sava, Kiryat Gat, Eilat, Ofakim, Netanya, Zikhron Yaacov, Nes Tziona, Herzliya, Nahariya; Karkur, Elyakim, Tzemakh, and Haogen junctions, Shar Hanegev and several junctions in the Galilee, among them Gomeh, Amiad, Horfish, Kiryat Tivon, Kabri, Nahalal and Carmiel.
Related: https://maki.org.il/en/?p=32375