Hostage relatives demonstrate at Israeli prime minister's home

Relatives of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip demonstrated in front of the Jerusalem home of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday in support of reaching a deal with the Islamist militia.

Dozens of relatives and friends of the hostages, along with their supporters, called on Netanyahu to secure the release of the hostages. The organizers noted in a statement that the approach of winter made this more urgent.

"The hostages won't survive the freezing cold in the tunnels of Gaza," they said. "While Netanyahu and his team are busy trying to skew public opinion, 101 hostages are dying in impossible conditions," they added.

In their attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year, Hamas and other Palestinian groups seized 250 hostages and took them to the Gaza Strip.

The abduction and the massacre of around 1,200 people unleashed the ongoing war. Around half of the 101 hostages still held could be alive, according to Israeli estimates.

Netanyahu's opponents accuse him of needlessly prolonging the war and in this way delaying the hostages' release.

The prime minister is under pressure from his extremist and ultra-religious coalition partners to reject any deal with Hamas. His critics say that he aims to avoid the fall of his government at any price for fear of prosecution for corruption once out of office.