Israel’s Netanyahu faces huge wave of anger over handling of war with Hamas as bloodshed continues in Gaza

Tel Aviv — Anger at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the killings of the six Israeli hostages whose bodies were found over the weekend in a tunnel in Gaza was still mounting Wednesday as bloodshed in the Palestinian territory continued. The fury at Israel’s long-time leader manifested in a third consecutive night of mass protests, with tens of thousands of increasingly desperate Israelis demanding that Netanyahu agree to a cease-fire deal with Hamas to bring the remaining 101 captives back home. About 75 of the hostages are believed to still be alive.   

“The man is a liar, a compulsive liar,” protester Yair Katz fumed to CBS News on Tuesday night. “He’s a crook and a liar, and he’s a criminal.”

NOTE: This report includes an image of a dead child that readers may find disturbing.

Like many Israelis, Katz believes Netanyahu is putting his political fortune — which hinges on the survival of his tenuous governing coalition with far-right parties that reject a cease-fire with Hamas — above the fate of the hostages.

The protesters have vowed to continue demonstrating until Netanyahu agrees to a cease-fire and hostage release deal, but so far, the veteran politician has remained stubbornly defiant. He insisted in a Monday night address to his nation that he would not to “give in to pressure.”

Netanyahu has refused to accept any agreement that calls for Israeli forces to pull out of the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. He says Israel must maintain a troop presence there to prevent Hamas from rearming itself through smuggling tunnels across the border — an alleged flow of goods that both Egypt and Hamas deny.

Egypt and Hamas have both insisted on a full Israeli withdrawal from the corridor, and Hamas says it agreed to a previous cease-fire proposal, backed by President Biden, that included the provision, but that Netanyahu then changed his terms.

It remained unclear Wednesday how much flexibility Netanyahu’s government might be willing to show on the matter in the ongoing negotiations, with conflicting reports suggesting it could be included as part of a second phase of a cease-fire deal, but others saying the prime minister was unwilling to bend.

At a media briefing Tuesday night, former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the Philadelphi Corridor did not pose an “existential threat” to the country and should not get in the way of a hostage release deal. Gantz is a vocal critic of Netanyahu, but it wasn’t the first time there appeared to be disagreement between senior Israeli military figures — past and present — and the prime minister.

What did appear clear on Wednesday was that unless and until Netanyahu changes his mind, the war won’t end.

Even as the United Nations races to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children against a polio outbreak in Gaza — an emergency vaccination campaign for which Israel agreed to a series of limited military pauses — Israeli forces have continued to target several areas in the devastated Palestinian territory.

Among the places hit by strikes in recent days was the relatively safe central zone of Gaza, around the cities of Deir al-Balah and Gaza City. It was there, in the enclave’s once teaming capital city, that nine-year-old Tala Abu Ajwan was killed by shrapnel from an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday.

She was still wearing her pink rollerblades when she was pronounced dead at the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. 

Her family shared pictures of her life before the war, showing a happy little girl whose life was abruptly cut short as she played with friends. Local medics said she was among nine people killed when Israeli missiles slammed into a residential building next to a park in Gaza City.

CBS News has sought comment from the Israeli military about what was targeted in the attack.

In a statement largely mirroring others issued by the Israel Defense Forces since the war started, the IDF said Tuesday that a separate strike had hit a Hamas “command and control center” inside a building in Gaza City being using “to direct and conduct terror attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel.”

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” the IDF said, reiterating its frequent accusation that Hamas “systematically violates international law and operates from within civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip.” 

Ajwan’s mother was left inconsolable with grief, joining the families of almost 41,000 Palestinians killed since the war began, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory, who do not differentiate between civilian and combatant casualties.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’ unprecedented Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, which saw the militants kill some 1,200 people and take about 250 others hostage. Many of those captives were freed in a prisoner exchange during the only brief cease-fire achieved to date, in November.

With so much suffering, after nearly 11 months of brutal violence and an agonizing, ongoing hostage crisis, the Biden administration has said it’s now working to develop a new cease-fire and hostage release proposal in a bid to end the war.