Israeli public opinion is shifting on the Gaza war – but this may make Netanyahu even more reckless | Meron Rapoport

Families of the hostages are leading calls for a ceasefire. Let us hope the roar of guns in Rafah isn't used to drown them out

• Meron Rapoport is an Israeli journalist for +972 magazine and Local Call

At 7.40pm on Monday 6 May, Hamas issued a statement saying that it had accepted a ceasefire proposal offered by Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Spontaneous demonstrations, led by the relatives of Israelis who were kidnapped on 7 October, broke out in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Israel, calling for the government to accept the deal. At 10pm on the same night came the first reports from Rafah indicating that the long awaited and feared Israeli attack had begun.

In a nutshell, this sequence of events reflects the contradictory situation in which Israel finds itself: on the one hand, growing voices saying that the only way to bring back the hostages is to end the war, a demand that was almost a taboo until just a few weeks ago; and on the other, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, reluctant to accept any end to the war, claiming that the only way to bring back the hostages is through military pressure, in Rafah and elsewhere.

Meron Rapoport is an Israeli journalist who writes for +972 magazine and is an editor at Local Call

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.