The protest was organized by the October Council, a group founded by the families of victims and hostages captured by Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023, to demand accountability for the failure to prevent the Hamas attack that sparked the war in Gaza.
According to Israeli media, the rally was attended by leaders of the four main opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief of staff who stood shoulder to shoulder with Netanyahu and received a warm welcome from the crowd.
“Three days before the election, we will hold the culminating event marking three years of struggle to uncover the truth, demand accountability, and establish a state commission of inquiry,” the October Council on X wrote ahead of the rally.
The latest polls released before a period of silence took effect Friday evening showed that neither bloc would win a majority of seats in the Israeli parliament. A poll published by public broadcaster KAN found that out of 120 seats in the Israeli parliament, 52 would go to Eisenkot’s bloc and 50 to Netanyahu’s, with the rest going to non-aligned parties, including Arab ones.
An AFP journalist said thousands of people were marching from central Rabin Square to Hostages Square, a focal point of previous anti-government protests to demand the release of people held captive in Gaza.
“Whoever has led us for four years (since Netanyahu’s government came to power at the end of 2022) has done a terrible job,” Hadas Feuershtein, 68, told AFP shortly before the start of the rally.
“Israel has never been in a situation like the one it is in now,” she added.
Before the rally, the October Council had alerted law enforcement to possible “provocations” from pro-government agitators.
Israeli police announced Saturday evening that they had “arrested a suspect for attacking the security team of a public figure” in Tel Aviv, with the Israeli press identifying the target as former Prime Minister and opposition party leader Naftali Bennett.
The gathering comes after years of campaigning by Israeli civil society and opposition parties to establish an independent commission of inquiry into the security failures that led to the October 7 attacks.
Netanyahu’s government has refused to create such an independent body, like the one Israel has often created in the past to investigate major state failures.
He instead proposed creating a “political” commission, whose members would be appointed half by the ruling coalition and half by opposition MPs.
Opposition leaders, however, said they would boycott a commission appointed by politicians.
As the campaign draws to a close, Eisenkot and Bennett are expected to hold their final separate meetings with voters in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening.
— No ‘bbCoin’ —
Naama Bitterman, 18, a first-time voter, said at Saturday’s rally that she was confident the anti-Netanyahu bloc she supports would have the upper hand in the vote and improve Israel’s international standing, tarnished by three years of war in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran and a surge in violence in the occupied West Bank.
“I think if we win — and we will win — we can change the way other people around the world perceive us,” she told AFP.
Britain and several other countries imposed sanctions targeting goods from Israeli West Bank settlements in response to a wave of settler attacks on Palestinians and settlement construction approved by Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
To circumvent Israel’s growing international isolation, Netanyahu suggested Friday that Israel may need to develop an alternative digital economy.
Netanyahu, who has previously called for Israel to become militarily self-sufficient, also said that multibillion-dollar arms shipments from Washington, his key ally, “will not continue to arrive.”
Opposition leaders on Saturday slammed the prime minister’s suggestion.
Eisenkot sarcastically referred to the proposed parallel digital currency as “bbCoin,” using a common nickname for the prime minister, Bibi.
“Netanyahu says if re-elected, Israel will disconnect from the global economy. No online shopping, no high-tech investment, no security. We must not let bbCoin destroy Israel,” he wrote on X.
Yair Lapid, former prime minister and current opposition leader, accused Netanyahu of having “promised Israeli citizens before the elections that they would queue for an hour and a half for bread like in Russia or Iran.”
“If he wins the elections, this is what will happen: there will be sanctions, there will be no security agreement with the United States… and there will be no Israeli economy,” he said in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12.
© 2026 AFP
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