Israel’s Netanyahu dismisses calls for early election as thousands protest

from al Jazeera

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls for an early election as thousands of protesters take to the streets in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, demanding he step down.

Netanyahu has seen his popularity plummet in opinion polls since the October 7 attack that sparked the devastating war on Gaza.

Calls for an early vote have been mounting since October when the Palestinian group Hamas launched a rare attack inside Israeli territory, killing some 1,100 people and taking more than 200 others captive, nearly half of whom were released during a brief truce in November.

In response, the Israeli military launched unprecedented air and ground strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip, killing nearly 29,000 Palestinians so far and displacing more than 1.4 million people in a campaign many governments have termed a genocide.

Antigovernment protests that shook Israel for much of 2023 had largely subsided during the war. Still, demonstrators again took to the streets on Saturday night, calling for new polls, which are not scheduled until 2026.

Thousands defied a police ban on large rallies in Tel Aviv as they hit the streets, according to local media, though the crowd was much smaller than last year’s mass protests...

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