Israelis began large labour strikes on Monday and took to the streets again in their strongest push yet to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to accept a ceasefire with Hamas and secure the release of hostages held in Gaza.

Civil servants at several ministries stayed at home or went out to protest, while many post offices and bank branches were closed, and university lectures cancelled. Ben Gurion, the country’s main airport, suspended take offs between 8am and 10am local time.

The government is taking legal action to try to stop the strikes from spreading.

Anger is rising in Israel after the bodies of six hostages were found in a tunnel in the Gaza Strip. Each was shot repeatedly from short range, not long before being discovered, medical examiners said.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated in cities around the nation on Sunday, in what appeared to be the largest protests since the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.

Both the protests and strikes reflect deep anger at Netanyahu, who critics say is prolonging the war - and thus reducing the chances of early elections - rather than prioritising the safe return of the roughly 100 remaining hostages in Gaza. The military conflict has already spread to the West Bank and to neighbouring Lebanon, threatening to engulf the region in a wider war.

Netanyahu has “been driven primarily by a desire to retain power with a narrow, very radical messianic coalition in the Israeli government”, said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, the father of hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, a 36-year-old Israeli-American.

“He’s preferred that, at least to date, over the well-being of all the hostages,” Dekel-Chen said Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.

Despite the pressure, there was no sign Netanyahu was prepared to shift course.

“Those who murder hostages do not want a deal,” he said in a statement on Sunday. “We will pursue you, we will find you and we will settle accounts with you.”

A Security Cabinet meeting ended on Sunday evening without action on a proposal from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to drop Netanyahu’s insistence that Israeli troops remain in the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt - a key sticking point in talks with Hamas, two officials told Bloomberg.

Gallant had warned in a Cabinet meeting last week that not dropping the demand would amount to the execution of hostages. 

Netanyahu has defended his stance as necessary to ensure that Hamas doesn’t use a truce to rearm, regroup and weather the Israeli campaign to destroy it. Should Hamas endure, government officials have warned, that would spell more hostage-taking in the future. 

US President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he believes “we are on the verge of having an agreement”, though the last active talks broke up inconclusively in Cairo last weekend. 

Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will meet on Monday morning with the US team trying to broker a hostage deal, according to the White House.

The Washington Post reported that the US has been talking with Egypt and Qatar about the outline of a take-it-or-leave-it deal to present to Israel and Hamas, citing an unidentified senior administration official.

“It is no longer possible to stand idly by,” Arnon Bar-David, the chair of Histadrut, a labour group representing the majority of Israel’s trade unionists, said on Sunday when calling for a general strike. “This thing - of Jews being murdered in the tunnels of Gaza - is unconscionable and it has to stop. A deal must be reached, and a deal is more important than anything else.”

The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange opened on Monday, and was little changed as of 10.30am.

Israel’s finance minister said he asked for a court injunction against the strike and warned civil servants they wouldn’t be paid for time off taken to participate. 

The slain hostages included a maimed Israeli-US citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23. His parents became among the most high-profile advocates for the hostages, meeting with Biden and other world leaders, and speaking at the US Democratic National Convention to a standing ovation. Biden spoke with his parents, Rachel and Jon, on Sunday, a White House official said.

“For 11 months, the Israeli government led by Netanyahu failed to do what a government is expected to do - bring its sons and daughters home,” the Hostage Families Forum posted on X. “If it weren’t for his thwarting, excuses and spin, the hostages whose deaths were announced this morning would probably be alive.”

Another of the killed hostages was Carmel Gat, 40, an occupational therapist. She was abducted on Oct 7 from her parents’ home in Kibbutz Be’eri, a collective farming community. Her mother was killed in the attack. Some hostages released earlier said she’d helped them enormously in captivity, teaching them yoga and meditation.

The others were Eden Yerushalmi, 24, who was studying to be a Pilates instructor; Alexander Lobanov, 33, a married father of two who’d been working at a music festival that was attacked by Hamas gunmen; Almog Sarusi, 27, who was at the festival with his girlfriend, who was wounded; and Ori Danino, 25, the oldest of five siblings, who was planning to begin studies in electrical engineering.

Hamas said the hostages were killed by Israeli bombs.

About 250 people were abducted on Oct 7 when Hamas - considered a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union - stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people. More than 100 hostages were freed during a ceasefire late last year, and about 100 more remain in captivity, including 35 declared dead in absentia by Israel.

More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.

  - Bloomberg