At the same time, the demands are that those Israeli hostages taken into Gaza territory be returned safely.

AK reported how Monday morning, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, launched missiles towards the Tel Aviv airport, though that facility's air defenses neutralized these, so the airport did not stop its work.

Air defenses were also functioning over central Tel Aviv, AK went on.

Tel Aviv's young and more liberal citizens often hold demonstrations whose starting point is the iconic Dizengoff Square, AK reports.

While the square has also been the scene of past terror attacks, currently it is the scene of lit candles, in memory of the people who died in the mass-scale Hamas attack starting the weekend before last.

Israel resident Dana told AK that: "They came with guns, and killed people, babies, raped women, beheaded babies, burned people alive," 

But what about the Israeli military response and counter-strike on Gaza, which has led to the deaths so far, AK reported, of hundreds of Palestinian children?

"They have a choice," Dana, originally from Germany, said.

"According to the BBC this morning, Hamas has around 20,000 fighters. We're talking about two million people in Gaza. They could hold an uprising, they could throw out Hamas," she added.

Meanwhile, Betzalel, a father of eight from Sderot, which lies just a few hundred meters from the 1950 armistice line and so well inside the closed military zone put in place by Israeli authorities following the attacks, said he had been given by the authorities a free hotel room in Tel Aviv for at least a week.

In his opinion, Gaza should be see a sort of Carthaginian final chapter and be razed to the ground.

Even the children are culpable, since in a decade's time, they will have become radicalized, and formed the next generation of terrorists, he said.

Of all those AK spoke too, none ventured to predict how long the current conflict will last.

Other protesters called for those hostages taken into Gaza or Hamas-controlled territory by that organization, in harrowing footage beamed around the world, to be released immediately – though little in the way of how this could materialize or whet the actual time-frame would be, was mentioned.

Some protesters were critical of the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while a minor scuffle even broke out at one point.

The original AK slot (in Estonian and English) is here.

U.S. President Joe Biden is to visit Israel on Wednesday, and is due to hear presentations on how the IDF and other organizations will conduct operations in a way that "minimises civilian casualties", the U.S. says

Hamas meanwhile says it has fired a new "barrage of rockets" at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

--

Follow ERR News on Facebook and Twitter and never miss an update!