Bereaved families from the Gvura Forum held a protest vigil on Thursday evening outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, as the security cabinet convened inside.
The meeting dealt with the expected summit next week between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump.
During the protest, the families called on the prime minister and the cabinet ministers: “You have no mandate to rebuild Gaza before Hamas is destroyed and before the last hostage, Ran Gvili, is returned.” They demanded that the government refrain from moving to phase B of the war as long as the official war aims - eliminating Hamas and returning Gvili - have not been achieved.
Minister Orit Strock stepped out of the cabinet meeting to meet the demonstrators and expressed support for their statements. “We are deeply grateful to you, Gvura Forum and Tikva Forum, for the backing you have given us,” she said. “We have not yet reached victory, and I am ashamed that you have to stand out here. You should be traveling together with the prime minister and standing with him before President Trump. We went to war to bring the hostages home, but mainly to restore security to the State of Israel - and there will be no security without the defeat of Hamas. Victory must be a full victory. Not fake disarmament, not partial disarmament. Before that happens, we cannot move forward anywhere and we cannot withdraw from anywhere.”
Tzvika Mor, chairman of Gvura Forum and father of former hostage Eitan Mor, stressed that the war was launched first and foremost to remove the Hamas threat. “This war we embarked on is, first and foremost, to remove the threat hanging over the State of Israel. You don’t wage a war to retrieve hostages. You carry out specific operations to retrieve hostages. War is always, without exception, to restore sovereignty, to remove a threat from the state,” he said. “If it turns out, God forbid, that this entire effort and all the heavy sacrifices made in the war were only for the hostages - and not to permanently remove the Hamas threat from the State of Israel - then we are abandoning the security of our children and grandchildren.”
“From here I am calling on the prime minister: first of all, good luck on your trip to the US. But remember this demand - not only ours, the ones standing here, but of all 940 soldiers who fell in the war, who fell in order to remove the threat over Israel. To secure the lives of future generations, so that our children and grandchildren will not have to return to Gaza and fight again in its alleys. We have to cleanse it of the monsters that exist there - the monsters and all the infrastructure they have there: weapons and tunnels,” Mor added.
Itzik Bonzel, father of fallen soldier Amit Bonzel and a member of the Gvura Forum leadership, said the families will not accept excuses or international pressure. “We have no intention of giving up. Our sons and daughters fell for the goals you set for them as IDF soldiers, and they did not fall in vain. Our sons and daughters did everything to bring down Hamas, they did everything and succeeded in bringing back almost all the hostages - and Ran Gvili cannot become the next Ron Arad. We will not allow such a reality. We will not accept excuses about American pressure, and not excuses about Trump. We are not another star on the American flag. We are a sovereign country - a country that decides for itself in order to stay here forever.”
“Mr. Prime Minister, we call on you: stand firm before President Trump. Join hands with him. Tell him about the bereaved families standing here before you, tell him about the wounded, tell him about the families of the hostages who returned home. We will not agree to any compromise of moving to phase B before we have fulfilled the mission of returning all the hostages and dismantling Hamas,” Bonzel added.
Danny Steinberg, father of the late Colonel Yehonatan Steinberg, said: “You have no mandate to go out and talk about rebuilding Gaza. You have a mandate to go out and talk about rebuilding the people, rebuilding the state - and that is only possible if you stand by the words you told us at the beginning of the war, those government decisions: dismantling Hamas and returning all the hostages. Not all the hostages have returned - you cannot boast about that. Until Ran Gvili returns home, you cannot look the families in the eyes and say you have fulfilled what you promised.”
“We are giving you complete backing - more than 380 bereaved families stand behind you - giving you the backing to return to Israel with a mandate to stand by what you committed to,” he concluded.