Are Israel’s Hostage Square protesters being repurposed for a red-green push?
BY
launching solidarity protests with the Arab sector, have Israel’s left-wing demonstrators found a new cause to rally around? If so, what impact could this budding alliance have on Israel’s upcoming 2026 elections?
Some 40,000 protesters gathered in Tel Aviv on Motzaei Shabbos to demand government action to stem the rising murder rate in some predominantly Arab-populated cities. More than 250 Arabs were killed in 2025 — the vast majority by gun violence. The trend has continued into 2026, with at least 15 Arabs murdered in January alone.
At the demonstration, Jewish and Arab demonstrators waved black flags — a symbol of the protest movement that began in 2019 as anti-Netanyahu marches and later evolved into rallies against proposed judicial reforms and the government’s handling of hostage negotiations.
Their concerns about the soaring Arab death toll — and the very real possibility that violence could spill into Jewish neighborhoods in Israel’s mixed cities — are genuine. Yet the timing of their new solidarity, ahead of the impending elections, points to a deeper agenda. The protest movement is being redeployed to the next stage — an Israeli version of the Red-Green alliance between progressive left groups (Reds) and Islamist factions (Greens), to achieve their long-term goal of toppling Netanyahu and electing a center-left government in his place.
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