Six months ago, armed terrorists burst across the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel and unleashed a devastating massacre, during which 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 were taken hostage by Hamas. What followed has been a war that on some level everybody appears to be losing.
That reality will be writ large Sunday — in the vigil for the hostages still not returned, on the streets of Tel Aviv where protesters will gather, in the rubble of Gaza where the dead pile up, and in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, where negotiators will once again try to hash out a cease-fire.
Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 33,000 people, most of them women and children, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry. Israel says it has two primary aims: to free the remaining 130 mostly Israeli hostages; and to destroy the Hamas militant group that led the attack on Oct. 7, a goal that critics say is too ambitious or impossible.
Meanwhile Israel has become increasingly isolated internationally, with even its closest ally, the United States, demanding that it do more to help protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where more than 1 million people are now thought to be on the brink of famine. Israel’s killing of seven aid workers has put that global condemnation into overdrive, with prominent voices in Europe and the U.S. now calling for the suspension of arms sales.
At home, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the subject of mass street protests calling for his removal over his handling of the war. The movement includes many family members of the hostages who say he has prioritized his own political future — allegedly extending the war to stave off a political ousting, not to mention his legal troubles — over rescuing their loved ones.
On Saturday night, tens of thousands gathered in Tel Aviv in an anti-government protest that police later forcibly dispersed.
And many inside Israel and abroad fear the country may be on the brink of a…
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