Protesters block highways, demonstrate at Netanyahu’s home calling for hostage deal

Protesters calling for a hostage deal blocked multiple highways and rallied outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence on Friday evening, as the Hostages and Missing Families Forum announced another day of nationwide hostage protests for Tuesday.

The protests come as Israel plans to launch a major offensive to capture Gaza City, a move that the families of the captives say will condemn them to their deaths, and days after Hamas accepted a proposal for a phased hostage-ceasefire deal, which Israel has not officially responded to.

In Tel Aviv, protesters blocked traffic in both directions on the Ayalon highway, near the Hashalom interchange.

Footage on social media showed the demonstrators unfurling banners reading “Stop until they’re all back” and setting up a table for a Shabbat meal which they later set on fire.

Hebrew media quoted the protesters as saying that while Netanyahu “sits at the Shabbat table, hostage families are forced to spend Friday in fear for the fate of their loved ones.”

They added that “there is a deal on the table” and demanded that Netanyahu accept it.

פעילים למען החטופים חוסמים את נתיבי איילון במחלף השלום | @lee_ayash pic.twitter.com/pbsVtxngXB

— i24NEWS (@i24NEWS_HE) August 22, 2025

Protesters also set up a mock Shabbat table and blocked traffic on Route 6, near the Elyakim Interchange in northern Israel.

“There will be no Shabbat meal anywhere in the country until everyone’s back and the war ends,” the protesters said, according to Ynet.

שלושים איש החליטו עכשיו לחסום את כביש שש באזור מחלף אליקים, "למען החטופים". שוב נהגים אקראיים סופגים בריונות לא לגיטימית. אסור למשטרת ישראל לאפשר את זה pic.twitter.com/2npzksxiXP

— Akiva Novick (@akivanovick) August 22, 2025

Protesters also gathered outside the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem, where they set up another Shabbat table with the message: “Netanyahu — leave the Shabbat table and move to the negotiating table.”

At the rally, protesters placed pictures of remaining hostages on seats around a table set for a meal of pita slices and canned beans — the food given to the captives in Gaza.

Yael Adar, mother of slain captive Tamir Adar, assailed Netanyahu in a speech outside the premier’s residence for approving the new Gaza City offensive rather than moving forward on a ceasefire-hostage deal.

“Instead of heading south for meetings on conquering Gaza, you should go up to Jerusalem to convene the cabinet, and say one thing — ‘I’m sending a negotiating team, and [they’re] not coming home until there is a deal to bring back all the hostages,” she said.

As the protests were taking place, the Hostages Forum announced plans for a “day of mass public identification” with the captives on Tuesday, as they push for continued mass protests to pressure the government to make a deal with Hamas to free the captives.

Protests will take place across the country, with a central rally set to take place at Hostages Square at 8 p.m. following a march from the nearby Savidor train station, the Forum said.

The announcement came a day after Netanyahu vowed to take over Gaza City and said he would hold talks on a deal to release all the hostages, prompting criticism from some hostage families for his failure to address a partial ceasefire-hostage deal that Hamas said it had accepted.

“We are in the midst of another premeditated torpedoing [of a deal] by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” the Forum said in a press release on its new protest plans. “The government is disconnected from the nation and is sacrificing its citizens.”

Earlier this week, the Forum announced a day of nationwide protests planned for this coming Sunday, to follow the mass demonstrations that took place last Sunday, but later changed the format of the planned rallies, favoring smaller events across the country instead of one major protest in Tel Aviv. The mass protest in Tel Aviv will instead be held on Tuesday.

The Forum says last Sunday’s protests were “just the beginning.”

“This coming Tuesday, Israel will rally to the side of the hostages, to the side of the soldiers exhausted by the burden, to the side of tens of thousands of evacuees waiting to return to their homes in safety,” after being displaced by the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, the Forum said.

Last week’s protest in Tel Aviv was one of the biggest since the war began nearly two years ago, and according to the Hostages Forum was attended by over half a million people, though there were no official police estimates for the crowd’s size.

The forum also estimated that some 1 million people had taken part in protests across the country throughout the day, as protest groups and organizations joined forces to stage a major day of civil disobedience to end the war in Gaza.

The rallies were accompanied by strikes at hundreds of local authorities, businesses, universities, and tech companies, though Israel’s central labor union, the Histadrut, did not join.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 50 hostages, including 49 of the 251 abducted in Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and the body of an IDF soldier killed in 2014. Twenty of the hostages are believed by Israel to be alive, with 28 declared dead by Israeli authorities and “grave concerns” for the well-being of two others.