‘I’ll rape your mother’: Israeli cop tells protester amid violent clashes

Israeli police have attacked anti-regime protests in Tel Aviv and al-Quds as demonstrators demanded new elections and a prisoner exchange deal with the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Thousands gathered in Tel Aviv and al-Quds for weekly anti-regime protests on Saturday, raging against the regime of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demanding new elections and a deal to release the captives in Gaza.

In al-Quds, police arrested four protesters using excessive force, according to witnesses.

At Paris Square, outside Netanyahu’s official residence, a police officer cursed and threatened a protester he detained, telling him “I’ll rape your mother”.

Also, video footage showed a protester being forcefully arrested by a group of police, one of whom pinned him to the hood of a car and grabbed his neck, as surrounding protesters shouted not to choke him.

Thousands of anti-regime protesters gather outside Netanyahu's home

Thousands of anti-regime protesters have marched in al-Quds and gathered outside prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu

In Tel Aviv, tensions escalated as clashes broke out during a demonstration focusing on the captives' situation, leading to a fiery protest organized by families of captives outside the Histadrut labor union headquarters.

Anti-regime protest organizers in Tel Aviv estimated 130,000 Israelis converged on downtown on Saturday night.

During the protest near the Kirya military base in central Tel Aviv, police officers were caught on camera forcibly handling opposition legislator Naama Lazimi from the Labor Party of Israel. She said she was assaulted and pulled by hair.

Labor party leader Yair Golan condemned the attack on Lazimi, saying, “The job of the police is to protect people and not to be a private militia of a convicted criminal that beats up people and opposition members.”

Anti-regime groups have also said they are organizing a shutdown of businesses and commerce on July 7, marking nine months of the Gaza war.

Over the past week, protest leaders had campaigned for a shutdown of commerce on Thursday, but the call was largely ignored.

US pressuring Hamas to accept Israeli proposal: Hamdan

Hamas says the US is pressuring the Palestinian resistance movement to accept Israeli truce proposal.

The protests are being held every week since October 7 after Israel launched its genocidal war against Gaza with settlers voicing their dissatisfaction with the regime’s war management.

Some 250 Israelis were taken captive by Gaza’s resistance movements, while Israel believes over 100 of the captives are still held in the Gaza Strip and that more than 70 of them are alive.

Arab mediators’ efforts, backed by the United States, have so far failed to conclude a ceasefire.

Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon, said on Saturday that the United States is pressuring the Palestinian resistance movement to accept an Israeli truce proposal, which does not honor the group’s condition of complete cessation of Tel Aviv’s brutal aggression against the Gaza Strip.

Israel has repeatedly announced that it only accepts temporary pauses in fighting until Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007 is “eradicated.”

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