Donald Trump was the guest of honour on Saturday night at what could be the final rally at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. Demonstrators took turns shaking the hand of the US president, or rather, a woman wearing a papier-mache Trump mask, while another woman stood silently holding a sign reading “we love Trump.”
For nearly two years, Israelis have gathered in front of the ministry of defence and demanded the government bring home their loved ones. Now, as Israel and Hamas seem to be on the cusp of a deal that could end the war and bring the hostages home, many Israelis are thanking Trump, not the Israeli government, for the potential peace.
“This is the first day that I can feel happy in two years. And it’s because of Trump,” said Shabbat Moshe, a 71-year-old who works in the film industry and has four sons fighting in Gaza.
Moshe joined thousands of others waving Israeli flags and wearing yellow ribbons that symbolise the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
A pro-Trump banner on the ground at Hostage Square on Saturday. Photograph: William Christou/The Guardian
Despite it being a commemoration of the nearly second anniversary of the 7 October 2023 attack, in which Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people and took 251 people hostage, the mood was festive. The night before, Hamas had partially accepted Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza and to release the remaining 48 hostages it holds, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
“I’m cautiously optimistic. I’m not going overboard yet, I want to wait for the first hostages to come out before I say something is really happening here. But I’m more optimistic than I’ve been in a long time,” said Dani, a software engineer at the rally who declined to give his last name.
Though previous ceasefire deals had collapsed, Dani thought that Trump’s personal involvement in the ceasefire negotiations meant that this round of talks was more likely to succeed. “This time it looks like all the parties are being dragged kicking and screaming to the table. And Trump is the one who is dragging them,” he said.
The majority of Israelis – 66% according to a recent poll by the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) – think the war in Gaza has gone on too long.
Dani, like many other Israelis and attenders at the rally, felt that Israel had long since achieved its goals in Gaza. The reason that it was still in Gaza, he said, was to ensure the political survival of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his rightwing allies in the ruling coalition.
“If Netanyahu has a way to sabotage the deal to keep the hardliners in line, he’ll try. But I think he doesn’t have a choice. I think, no I hope, that he’s a nonentity at this point,” Dani said.
It is the hostages that drive the anti-war protests in Israel more than anything else. The safety of Palestinians in Gaza is low on the list for most people in Israel calling for the end of the war.
According to the IDI poll, returning the hostages is the top reason given by respondents who want the war in Gaza to end. Only 5.9% of respondents say they want the war to end to stop harming the people of Gaza.
This comes despite the mounting death toll in Gaza, where Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians and wounded about 170,000, according to the Gaza ministry of health, which says about half of those casualties were women and children.
A UN commission of inquiry, several human rights groups and the world’s leading association of genocide studies also have concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Israel denies this claim, saying its has acted only in self-defence.
Protesters at the rally went one step further, with one demonstrator saying their fight in Gaza was being fought for the “benefit of the rest of the western world”.
“The Europeans will understand very quickly what we’re dealing with. They opened the border to Muslims and now the local people will suffer,” said Tamara Poizner, a 53-year-old chief financial officer of a services company.
“We would like the hostages back, I don’t care about the details. Hamas is still dangerous, their basic belief is that they want us dead and they want our land. This belief cannot die, you can kill thousands of people but not the idea,” she added.