As truce talks falter, pro-hostage deal, anti-government rallies set to draw thousands

Thousands of Israelis are expected to take part in pro-hostage deal and anti-government rallies across the country on Saturday night, as Gaza truce-hostage talks appeared stalled after the US and Israel withdrew their negotiators from Doha.

For the second weekend running, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum will begin its main weekly rally at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, from which participants will march to the US Embassy Branch Office to demonstrate there.

Anti-government hostage families protesting in front of the Israel Defense Forces headquarters on Begin Road, and anti-government activists protesting on Tel Aviv’s Habima Square, are also expected to join the march to the US mission, as they did last week.

The first part of the Families Forum rally, at Hostages Square, will feature speeches by Or Levy, who was released from Hamas captivity in February as part of the last truce-hostage deal; Ela Haimi, wife of slain captive Tal Haimi; and Omer Biran, an IDF reservist whose brother, Cpt. Reei Biran, was killed in an apparent accident in Gaza earlier this month.

The second part of the rally, outside the US mission, will feature speeches by captivity survivor Iair Horn, who was released a week after Levy as part of the same hostage deal, and whose younger brother Eitan is still captive; Yael Adar, mother of slain hostage Tamir Adar; and Yotam Cohen, brother of captive soldier Nimrod Cohen.

The Forum will demand “a comprehensive deal that will bring all hostages home and end the war,” according to a press release on the weekly rally.

Hostage families assailed the partial deal most recently on the table, which would release 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 slain hostages in exchange for a yet-undetermined number of Palestinian security prisoners a during 60-day truce.

The Forum also expressed fears of the families after the latest limited deal appeared to fall apart, with Israel and the US withdrawing their delegations from Doha and US President Donald Trump saying that Hamas leaders had no interest in reaching a deal and would need to “be hunted down.”

“Hamas didn’t really want to make a deal. I think they want to die,” Trump told reporters outside the White House on Friday.

“Now that there are reports the deal has collapsed, we are begging you — do everything, fight, and stand by us until every last one of them is home. We cannot return to normal life until they are back,” the Forum said.

In addition to the Tel Aviv rally, the Families Forum will hold smaller rallies in Jerusalem, Kiryat Gat, the Shaar HaNegev Junction in the Negev and other locations.

Meanwhile, prominent anti-government activists will hold a large demonstration protest in Ness Ziona, where a right-wing mob there last week attacked Arab MK Ayman Odeh while chanting “death to Arabs.”

In an announcement of the Ness Ziona rally, organizers accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar 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.”

None of the Saturday night rallies appeared set to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the UN has reported skyrocketing malnutrition over the past week.

On Friday, a large anti-war demonstration in the northern Arab town of Sakhnin called attention to the crisis, with former lawmaker Mohammad Barakeh, who heads the High Follow-up Committee, an Arab community umbrella organization, saying the demonstration was “here to send a clear message against genocide, ethnic cleansing and starvation.” He also likened Odeh’s attackers to Nazi and white supremacist groups.

According to Haaretz, the Sakhnin demonstration was attended by over 10,000 people under heavy police presence. No arrests were reported.

Dozens of people also attended smaller anti-war rallies in the central towns of Jaffa and Tira and the northern town of Kabul, Arabic-language website Arab48 reported.

Talks to end the war appeared to reach a standstill on Thursday when the US and Israel recalled their negotiators after receiving what US special envoy Steve Witkoff described as Hamas’s “selfish” response to the partial ceasefire-hostage deal on the table.

Tens of thousands, Palestinians and Jews, marched together in Sakhnin against the war of annihilation and the deliberate starvation.

For an end to the war, for an end to the occupation and the achievement of peace, for the sake of life. pic.twitter.com/QH6yuIglFk

— איימן עודה أيمن عودة Ayman Odeh (@AyOdeh) July 25, 2025

Hamas said Friday that talks were set to resume next week, but a source involved in the mediation effort and an Arab diplomat have denied this.

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 a soldier who was killed in 2014.

Jacob Magid contributed to this report.