(Bloomberg) -- Israel recovered the bodies of six hostages who it said had been killed by their Hamas captors in Gaza, prompting the country’s largest labor union to call a strike to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a deal with the Palestinian militant group for a cease-fire.
The six — including a maimed Israeli-US citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents helped spearhead US solidarity campaigns for the hostages’ return — were discovered Saturday by troops searching a tunnel in the southern city of Rafah, the army said.
An Israeli official told Bloomberg News their remains bore signs of execution by shooting. Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said the hostages had been killed in an Israeli bombing.
The discovery stunned a public already dismayed at slow-moving efforts — shepherded by the US, Qatar and Egypt — to mediate a way to wind down the almost 11-month-old war between Israel and Hamas. Netanyahu, who has been holding firm opposing concessions demanded by Hamas for a potential cease-fire, canceled a planned appearance to open the new school year, as well as the regular weekly cabinet meeting.
Netanyahu made a rare public penance in a call to the parents of one of the slain hostages, saying he apologized that the state failed to save their son and the other five. His office said his military secretary had been in Moscow in an effort to secure Russian help with the hostages.
The slain hostages were mourned in the US, where President Joe Biden voiced outrage at Hamas and promised, in a statement, to keep “working around the clock for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.”
In Israel, much of the public fury was directed toward the prime minister. Histadrut, a labor group that represents the majority of the country’s trade unionists, on Sunday declared a nationwide strike beginning Monday to pressure the government to make a deal with Hamas for the release of the remaining hostages. The action will include Ben-Gurion International Airport, the main airport in the country.
“It is no longer possible to stand idly by,” Histadrut Chairman Arnon Bar-David said in a televised statement. “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.”
Netanyahu on Friday won the support of his security cabinet for keeping Israeli troops in the key Gaza-Egyptian border area under any truce with Hamas.
The one “nay” vote came from Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who, according to a person familiar with the matter, said, enraged, that the prime minister might as well vote on executing the hostages. Gallant had sought a cabinet meeting for several weeks to discuss the cease-fire deal, which he says was at a “strategic crossroads,” and wasn’t notified in advance that the vote would take place. He said it would delay a truce, possibly at the cost of the lives of hostages, the person said.
In a post on X Sunday, Gallant demanded that the forum reconvene immediately to reverse the decision about the so-called “Philadelphi corridor.”
But while Netanyahu’s office said the security cabinet would meet on Sunday, the conservative prime minister gave no indication he plans to soften his tack on the negotiations — and sought to shift blame to Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the US and European Union.
“Those who murder hostages do not want a deal,” Netanyahu said in a statement.
While the Israeli public has rallied behind the war, an Aug. 16 poll found 63% support a truce deal under which some hostages would be released in exchange for the freeing of Palestinian security prisoners. Only 12% opposed such a deal.
Anti-government protesters said they would mount demonstrations to “shut down the country” on Sunday. Yair Lapid, centrist head of the parliamentary opposition, called on the national labour federation to order a strike.
Goldberg-Polin, 23, was born in Berkeley, California, and moved with his American family to Jerusalem as a child. He was a lover of music and soccer, and planned to start university soon. 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.
Shortly after the Hamas cross-border rampage that sparked the Gaza war and in which Goldberg-Polin lost his left hand to a grenade, his mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, lamented at the United Nations the indifference around the globe to the fate of the hostages.
“Where is the world?” she said. “Where are you?”
Rachel Goldberg-Polin never stopped campaigning for her son and the other hostages. In an Instagram message on Sunday, the family asked for privacy now that his body had been discovered.
In April, he was seen gaunt but alive in a video released by Hamas.
Another of the slain 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 the music festival; Almog Sarusi, 27, who was at the festival with his girlfriend, who was wounded there; and Ori Danino, 25, the oldest of five siblings who was planning to begin studies in electrical engineering.
About 250 people were abducted on Oct. 7 when Hamas stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people. More than 100 hostages were freed during a cease-fire late last year, and about 100 more remain in captivity — including 35 of them declared dead in absentia by Israel.
The Gaza war has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the enclave’s health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
“We should end this war,” Biden said earlier on Saturday when he was leaving church in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. “I think we’re on the verge of having an agreement. They’ve all said they agree on the principles, so keep your fingers crossed.”
The violence has spread to the West Bank, another territory where Palestinians seek statehood. On Sunday, Israel’s police said three of its officers were killed in a drive-by shooting on their car there. There was no immediate Palestinian claim of responsibility.
--With assistance from Rebecca Choong Wilkins and Ethan Bronner.
(Updates with details of labor strike in first, seventh and eighth paragraphs. An earlier version corrected the death of Carmel Gat’s father.)
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