Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu faces wave of anger over his handling of war with Hamas as bloodshed continues in Gaza

Tel Aviv — Anger against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu following the murders of six Israeli hostages whose bodies were found this weekend in a tunnel in Gaza was still piling up on Wednesday as Bloodshed in Palestinian Territory Anger at the longtime Israeli leader boiled over into a third straight night of mass protests, with tens of thousands of increasingly desperate Israelis demanding that Netanyahu agree to a ceasefire deal with Hamas to repatriate the remaining 101 hostages. About 75 of the hostages are believed to still be alive.

“This man is a liar, a compulsive liar,” protester Yair Katz told CBS News Tuesday night. “He’s a crook, a liar and a criminal.”

NOTE: This report includes an image of a dead child that readers may find disturbing.

Like many Israelis, Katz believes Netanyahu places his political fortunes – which depend on the survival of his fragile governing coalition with far-right parties that reject a cease-fire with Hamas – above the fate of the hostages.

Protesters have vowed to continue demonstrating until Netanyahu agrees to a ceasefire and a deal to release the hostages, but so far the veteran politician remained stubbornly provocativeHe insisted in a speech to his nation on Monday evening that he would not “give in to pressure”.

Netanyahu has rejected any deal that would require Israeli forces to withdraw from the Philadelphia Corridor, a narrow strip of land along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. He says Israel must maintain a military presence there to prevent Hamas from rearming through smuggling tunnels across the border – an alleged flow of goods that both Egypt and Hamas deny.

Egypt and Hamas have both insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from the corridor, and Hamas says it accepted a previous ceasefire proposal, backed by President Biden, that included that provision, but that Netanyahu later changed its terms.

It was unclear Wednesday how flexible Netanyahu’s government would be on the issue in the ongoing negotiations, with conflicting reports suggesting it could be included as part of a second phase of a ceasefire deal but others saying the prime minister was unwilling to give in.

At a press conference Tuesday night, former Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said the Philadelphia Corridor did not pose an “existential threat” to the country and should not stand in the way of a hostage release deal. Gantz is a vocal critic of Netanyahu, but he said the Philadelphia Corridor did not pose an “existential threat” to the country and should not stand in the way of a hostage release deal. It was not the first time that there seemed to be a disagreement between senior Israeli military officials – past and present – ​​and the prime minister.

What became clear on Wednesday is that until Netanyahu changes his mind, the war will not end.

Even as the United Nations scrambles to vaccinate hundreds of thousands of children against a Polio outbreak in Gaza – A emergency vaccination campaign for which Israel has agreed to a series of limited military truces — Israeli forces continued to target several areas of the devastated Palestinian territory.

Among the areas hit by airstrikes in recent days is the relatively safe central area of ​​Gaza, around the cities of Deir al-Balah and Gaza City. It was there, in the enclave’s once bustling capital, that nine-year-old Tala Abu Ajwan was killed by shrapnel in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday.

She was still wearing her pink roller skates when she was pronounced dead at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza City.

Her family shared photos of her life before the war, showing a happy little girl whose life was abruptly cut short while she was playing with friends. Local medics said she was among nine people killed when Israeli missiles crashed into a residential building next to a park in Gaza City.

CBS News has reached out to the Israeli military for comment on the purpose of the attack.

In a statement largely mirroring others issued by the Israel Defense Forces since the start of the war, the Israeli military said Tuesday that a separate strike hit a Hamas “command and control center” inside a building in Gaza City used “to direct and carry out terrorist attacks against IDF troops and the State of Israel.”

“Prior to the strike, numerous measures were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of precise munitions, aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” the Israeli military said, reiterating its frequent accusation that Hamas “systematically violates international law and operates from inside the civilian infrastructure of the Gaza Strip.”

Ajwan’s mother is inconsolable with grief, joining the families of nearly 41,000 Palestinians killed since the start of the war, according to health officials in the Hamas-controlled territory, who do not distinguish between civilian casualties and combatants.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’ unprecedented terror attack on Israel on October 7, which saw the militants kill some 1,200 people and take about 250 others hostage. Many of those captives were released in a prisoner exchange during the only brief ceasefire achieved to date, in November.

With so much suffering, after nearly 11 months of brutal violence and an agonizing and ongoing hostage crisis, the Biden administration said it was now working on a new ceasefire and hostage release proposal to try to end the war.