Imagine what Hamas leaders sitting in an air-conditioned hotel room in Doha, or a tunnel in Gaza, watching images of Israeli police using water cannons to disperse protesters calling for the release of hostages are thinking.
Are they thinking: Wow, these Israelis show tremendous solidarity. Look at how much they care about each and every hostage. We should release them soon.
Or are they thinking: Look at those Israelis fighting – literally fighting – among themselves, this time over the hostages. If we hold on to them longer, the fighting will become more intense.
Those Hamas leaders are watching these scenes closely. They are far more likely to interpret the protests not as solidarity but as division – proof that the hostages are sowing discord inside Israel.
And the more they believe the hostage issue is tearing Israeli society apart, the stronger will be their incentive to keep holding them. Sunday’s strikes, roadblocks, and protests – though they disrupt life in Israel – are unlikely to move Hamas toward releasing anyone; if anything, they encourage Hamas to dig in further.
This “day of rage,” though not described as such, rested on a familiar Israeli impulse: the belief that everything is in our hands; that if we just make the “right” move, then the other side will respond in kind.
It’s a dynamic that has repeated itself over decades of “peace talks.” We fight among ourselves about the settlements or the fate of Jerusalem, thinking that once we decide, the Palestinians will accept our decision. Except things haven’t exactly worked out that way.
Sunday’s actions were also based on another assumption: that the government is not genuinely interested in the hostages, and that if it were, they would be home by now. That assumption is wrong.
The obstacle is not Israel’s reluctance but Hamas’s refusal. As one US official after another in both the Biden and Trump administrations have said – from Tony Blinken, to Brett McGurk, to Steve Witkoff – it is Hamas, not Israel, holding up a deal.
So why the protests in Israel?
Because who else can Israelis protest against? Hamas? That’s not an option. There are no demonstrations to hold in Gaza City; no way to march on a Hamas office in Doha.
The frustration inevitably gets redirected inward against a government that at least feels within reach. The protests are less about changing Hamas’s calculus than about giving Israelis a way to act, i.e., a way to feel that they are not entirely powerless.
What’s the goal? Organizers voiced two, with the third being hidden.
The first goal, to free the hostages, is a sentiment universally shared. Who doesn’t want to see the suffering of the hostages and their families end today, right now?
The second goal: to stop the war. Here, too, a vast majority of Israelis want the killing to stop, the soldiers to come home, and the hundreds of thousands of reservists to return to their families after months away. Everyone wants that. The question is: At what price?
At what price should Israel end the war to free the hostages? At the cost of a complete IDF withdrawal from Gaza, including the Philadelphi Corridor and the perimeter, as Hamas demands? At the price of letting Hamas keep its weapons and retain control of the enclave – if not directly, then through proxies it manipulates?
At the cost of enabling Hamas to regroup, rearm, and carry out another October 7 massacre – if not in five years, then in 15 or 25?
When asked in those terms, the question is no longer a simple yes or no, but one with a huge “it depends” – specifically, on the terms.
Layered onto the desire to free the hostages and end the war was another message in Sunday’s protests – the one that was not stated publicly: toppling the government. There is nothing wrong with wanting to bring down the government and protesting to make it so. Just don’t do it on the back of the hostage issue.
Empathy with the pain and anguish of the hostages and their families is one of the issues that has bound the country together for many of the months since the October 7 massacre. Turning that into another arena for political combat risks eroding the fragile common ground that still exists.
After 681 days of captivity, the hostages remain at the center of the national consciousness. They are not in danger of being forgotten, as Ron Arad tragically was in the mid-1980s when his family was advised to keep quiet, since public pressure would only serve the interests of his captors.
His disappearance from the public eye scarred Israel, and that trauma partly explains today’s resolve: No one wants to repeat the silence that sealed Arad’s fate. Today, the opposite is true: The issue will not recede.
Do the protests in Israel make things worse?
But the question must be asked: What is accomplished by events such as Sunday’s, which divide the country further and project an image of a nation at war with itself?
People feel helpless. They want to act. The instinct is to press the government, the closest target at hand. But this repeats the mistake of the original campaign slogan: “Bring them home.” That phrase places the onus on Israel, implying that if the hostages are not home, it is because Israel has not done enough.
The pressure should be on Hamas – and on those with leverage over it, such as Qatar and, to a lesser extent, Turkey – to “Let them go.” Demonstrate outside Qatari and Turkish embassies.
Use the millions of shekels spent on protests inside Israel to fund international campaigns blackening Qatar and Turkey in world opinion. Advocate in the US for the linking of Washington’s ties with Qatar to Doha’s willingness to squeeze Hamas.
President Isaac Herzog, speaking Sunday at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, called on the world to stop its hypocrisy and pressure Hamas.
“When you want to exert pressure – you know how to exert pressure,” he exhorted. “Exert it on Hamas; they should have released them immediately!”
“Stop surrendering to Hamas, to its whims, and to its emotional manipulations,” Herzog said. “Release them first and foremost. Tell the entire world, and tell Hamas: You want to bring in supplies? You want to change the situation? Release them. First of all, release them! I call on the whole world: Stop the hypocrisy and release them.”
The anger channeled on Sunday was understandable. The sentiment was correct, but the target is misplaced.
It is Hamas that refuses to release the hostages, not the Israeli government, which is willing to do almost everything to get them back. Almost everything, that is, except one thing: allowing Hamas to survive, regroup, and prepare the ground for more October 7ths.
That line cannot be crossed. Because if it is, today’s protests for the release of hostages may only guarantee tomorrow’s protests for the release of the next ones.