Ex-hostage warns that captives ‘pay the price’ for breakdowns in Gaza truce negotiations

Tens of thousands took to the streets in cities across Israel on Saturday night to take part in the weekly protests to call for the return of the hostages held by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and for an end to the war in the Strip.

The protests came as negotiations between Israel and the Hamas terror group have seemingly fallen through, with Jerusalem on Thursday recalling its negotiators from Qatar, where proximity talks had taken place over the previous weeks.

At the main rally at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, thousands gathered to call for the captives’ urgent release from Gaza.

Or Levy, who was released from Hamas captivity during the previous Gaza ceasefire in February, said the remaining captives “pay the price” of crises in truce-hostage negotiations, after Israel and the US on Thursday recalled their negotiators from talks in Doha.

“In these days — days of confusion, of distrust, of pauses, of ruptures in the talks — I want to make something abundantly clear to you: every time the talks stop, every time a deal blows up, those who pay the price are the hostages,” Levy told the crowd.

“We felt it each time, again and again, and every time it was harder,” he said. “It was on us. Our bodies. Our souls.”

“I live two lives,” he said. “I can tell you what it’s like to suffer from endless hunger. What it’s like to have your feet chained for days on end,” he says. “What it’s like to live 50 meters underground, without daylight, without sky, just constant fear that everything will end.”

“I can try to explain. You can try to understand. But what we went through there, and what they’re still going through there, can’t really be understood,” he added. “What I do understand, and what you also understand, and what decision-makers understand as well, is that whoever’s there, in captivity, is in a very difficult condition.”

He demanded a deal that would bring back all the hostages — “not part of them, not in installments, with no selection,” he says, referring to the Nazi practice of picking out able-bodied Jews for hard labor and sending others straight to the slaughter.

The most recent proposal would secure the release of 10 living hostages and the remains of 18 slain hostages, out of a total of 50 hostages currently held of whom around 20 are believed to be alive.

“Bring everyone back, so we can celebrate life again,” said Levy. “For them. For us. For all of us.”

After the rally, protesters joined attendees of other rallies in a march toward the US Embassy Branch Office, where they aimed to pressure Washington to push Israel to return to the negotiating table.

Speaking outside the embassy, Iair Horn, who was released from Hamas captivity in February as part of the last Gaza ceasefire deal, and whose younger brother Eitan remains a hostage, said “we have no time” for a partial hostage deal like the one currently on the table.

“I came back in a partial deal that collapsed,” said Horn, who returned to Israel some two weeks before the deal’s 42-day first phase expired amid Israel’s refusal to negotiate the second, which would have required the IDF to pull out of Gaza.

“We have no more time for more partial deals. My brother has no time for more partial deals. We have to recalculate and talk about a deal that brings back everyone and ends the fighting,” Horn added.

“I was forced to leave behind my brother Eitan, down in the tunnels where you hear booms and run for your life, where the water is salty and the food is sparse,” he said. “Since my return, I’ve lived with feelings of guilt and am in the same nightmare day in and day out. I’m still held hostage in Gaza. As long as my brother and the 49 other hostages don’t come back, the entire nation of Israel is being held hostage in Gaza.”

Yael Adar, whose son Tamir was killed defending Kibbutz Nir Oz during the Hamas assault, told the crowd that continued fighting in Gaza endangers the hostages and Israeli society at large, and assailed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s comment on Friday that Israel and the US were “considering alternative options” to bring the captives home after the two countries recalled their negotiators.

“The alternative of continuing the fighting is dangerous, creates a forever war and bogs [us] down in the Gaza morass,” she said.

“The only alternative is a comprehensive deal to bring back all the hostages. It’s time to declare an end to the war, with a known date for the return of the last hostage, and rid ourselves of the idea of phased releases” of hostages, she said. “I want to know that the government of Israel is doing everything to bring back my son and all of the hostages.”

‘The starvation and killing are not in our name’

At a separate weekly anti-government demonstration at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, some 500 people gathered in the early evening — sparser attendance than usual, as prominent anti-government activists went to protest in Ness Ziona after a right-wing mob there assaulted Arab lawmaker Ayman Odeh last week while chanting “Death to Arabs.”

Speakers at the Tel Aviv protest railed against Netanyahu and his government for rejecting a state commission of inquiry into failures leading up to the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023; attempting to codify a blanket exemption from military service for the Haredi community; and allegedly letting party politics permeate the police.

They also called for an end to the Gaza war and the return of the hostages.

The protest’s emcee, Attorney Rotem Perlman Farhi, head of the “Free in our Land” protest group, also offered rare criticism of the war’s effect on residents of the Strip, where the UN and humanitarian groups reported skyrocketing starvation this past week.

“It’s important for us to clarify again and again that the starvation and killing are not in our name,” she said.

Later, former police commissioner Moshe Karadi accused National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of effectively making the Israel Police a branch of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party.

“I call from here to the officers and commanders of the Israel Police: Your only duty is to obey the law. You have no duty to obey a minister and the ideology of Otzma Yehudit,” he said, railing against Netanyahu for having handed over the police portfolio to a “man with a criminal record.”

Natalia Casarotti, whose son Keshet was killed fleeing the Nova music festival during the October 7 onslaught, told the crowd: “This war has long since lost its purpose. This war doesn’t protect us; it continues to stab us. It must end.”

At every mention of the war, left-wing protesters on the sidelines of the protest called on soldiers not to serve in Gaza, chanting: “Refuse! Refuse!”

Meanwhile, at the Ness Ziona rally in support of Odeh, the leader of the Hadash-Ta’al party, organizers accused Netanyahu, Ben Gvir and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana of failing to condemn Odeh’s attackers, who were praised by at least one coalition member.

“Tonight, we’re all in Ness Ziona,” wrote the organizers. “We’ll put up a non-violent, determined and moral resistance to Ben Gvir’s rioters.”

The protest attracted at least several hundred demonstrators, who gathered in a central intersection and blocked off traffic.

נס ציונה- הדלקת פנסים – אלפים נאספו בנס ציונה להפגנת מוצ”ש למען הדמוקרטיה pic.twitter.com/dFvyWTddFo

— ????️????????Bar????????????️ בחירות עכשיו (@barakdor) July 26, 2025

The protesters called for the government and police to hold Odeh’s attackers to account, and called for an end to the war in Gaza and the release of hostages.

‘These are not the values I grew up on’

At a weekly Jerusalem rally, which drew several hundred, some protesters criticized the demonstration for failing to talk about the dire humanitarian situation facing the Palestinian civilian population in Gaza.

“Enough with genocide, enough with this pathos,” called out Yoav Peck, a longtime anti-war activist.

Another woman shouted: “The time has come to cry out about something else.”

Organizers from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum tried to quiet these protesters, but other demonstrators object, insisting they have a right to speak.

“This evening, I just lost my patience with the pathos. We need to stop the war in any way we can, and then begin to deal with the real problems we have here,” Peck said.

“Do you hear from the stage something about what is happening to the two million people in Gaza?” he demanded, alleging that the majority of those at the rally think it would be possible to go back to normal after the hostages are released.

“I am embarrassed about this. These are not the values I grew up on. These aren’t the values of my country, to ignore our neighbor, to behave as if we can make them disappear,” he said.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.

Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May as a “gesture” to the United States.

The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 49 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of another soldier who was killed in 2014.