Angry hostage families harangue Israeli hardliner Smotrich

Angry members of some of the families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza harangued Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday over his opposition to a deal being negotiated in Qatar to halt the fighting and bring their relatives home.

Smotrich described the deal taking shape as "a catastrophe" for Israel's security and said Israel should keep up its campaign in Gaza until the complete surrender of Hamas, the militant group that ran the enclave before the war.

Dozens of members of the hostage families, many carrying photographs of the missing, squeezed into a committee room in the Israeli parliament where a meeting of the finance committee was held to examine the 2025 budget.

Some furious, some crying and pleading, they attacked Smotrich in an emotionally charged encounter that lasted for more than an hour, accusing him of abandoning the 98 Israeli and foreign hostages still left in Gaza.

"These kidnapped people can be returned," Ofir Angrest, whose brother Matan was taken hostage during the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

"The conditions are ripe, it's time for a deal, the Prime Minister said it. How can you, the Minister of Finance, oppose the return of all these abductees?"

Smotrich, leader of one of the hardline nationalist religious parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition, has been among the loudest opponents of a deal which he described as a "surrender" to Hamas.

Qatar, which is brokering the talks alongside Egypt and the United States, said it had given a draft agreement to both Israel and Hamas following a "breakthrough" overnight.

Yechiel Yehud, whose daughter Arbel was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz and whose son Dolev was killed, reminded Smotrich that he had visited their home in the kibbutz.

"I know your heart is in the right place, but you are required to do more than that," he said.