Thousands rally outside Knesset for elections, hostage deal for third straight night

Former prime minister Ehud Barak leads thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the Knesset in chants calling for elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a mass protest in Jerusalem is held for a third consecutive night.

Barak derides the current government as “stumbling and confused.”

The former premier calls for the Histadrut labor union to throw its full support behind the demonstrations in order to bring a “shutdown of the entire country.”

At the rally, which is also centered around calls for a deal to release captives held in Gaza, Merav Svirsky, the sister of murdered hostage Itay Svirsky, lambasts Netanyahu for not granting the Israeli delegation tasked with negotiations a full mandate to reach a deal.

“Bibi is playing politics on the backs of the hostage families,” she says. “It’s not that he failed to return them [the hostages], it’s not that he’s unable, it’s that he doesn’t want to, and thus the prime minister has to step down immediately.”