Thousands Protest in Israel After Recovery of 6 Hostages Killed in Gaza

In Jerusalem, the Israeli police fired skunk water, a noxious crowd control weapon, and forcefully removed a crowd of hundreds who rallied at the city’s main entrance. In smaller cities too, including Rehovot, in central Israel, people blocked traffic and chanted, “We want them back living, not in coffins!”

The national uproar built on months of protests and increasingly aggressive actions by the families of many hostages, who have been attempting to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to accept a deal to little avail.

The frustration of the families, who have accused Mr. Netanyahu of sacrificing their loved ones for his own political gain, appeared to reach a boiling point on Sunday after the Israeli military said it had recovered the bodies of six hostages killed in Gaza. The Israeli health ministry said they had been shot at close range sometime between Thursday and Friday morning.

Their blood was on the hands of the Israeli government, said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group that represents some of the relatives, and it called on the public to “bring the nation to a halt.”

The message was echoed by Israel’s largest labor union, which declared a strike beginning Monday morning, and by Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader.

The Families Forum said hundreds of thousands of people were protesting around the country on Sunday evening, but it was not possible to verify the figure. The Israeli police declined to provide any estimates of crowd sizes.

More protests were planned for Monday, the Families Forum said on social media.

Several family members of the hostages directed their anger squarely at Mr. Netanyahu as they agitated for public action.

“Whoever accepts the murder of civilians for the Prime Minister should stay home,” Gil Dickmann, whose cousin Carmel Gat was one of the hostages found dead over the weekend, said on the social media platform X. “Those who don’t: in memory of Carmel, take to the streets — stop the abandonment, bring the state to a halt, get a deal.”

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui is still held in Gaza, said in an interview that Mr. Netanyahu was “not only endangering our national security by refusing to complete this negotiated settlement, he’s also tearing apart this country by its seams. The country is aware that this government doesn’t exist for the service of the country but the service of itself.”

In Tel Aviv, where some of the largest crowds gathered, tensions escalated as night fell. Protesters blocked the main highway, pushed through security barricades and lit bonfires in the streets while the Israeli police carried out violent detentions and fired water cannons into the crowd. Naama Lazimi, a member of the Israeli Parliament, said on social media that the police had also thrown stun grenades at a close range, knocking her to the ground.

After hours of demonstrations, the Israeli police said it had arrested 29 people in Tel Aviv and cleared the highway. Five protesters were also arrested in Jerusalem, and two in Haifa, according to police officials.

Protesters expressed a mix of grief and rage, many carrying photos of the hostages and waving yellow ribbons in solidarity.

Shiraz Angert, a 23-year-old design student who was protesting in Jerusalem, wore a shirt bearing the photo of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the hostages whose bodies were recovered on Saturday. “It was possible to save them in a deal,” she said. “These are people who were sacrificed because we didn’t do enough.”

In Tel Aviv, Dan Levinson, a 59-year-old high school teacher, said he hoped the night’s protest would be a watershed moment.

“I feel that tonight is the last chance for a turning point — people out in the streets tonight understand that what we have not been able to achieve so far into the war, we will not be able to ever reach unless a decision is made,” he said.

“If it does not happen now,” he added, “it never will.”

“For 11 months, the government of Israel led by Netanyahu failed to do what is expected of a government — to bring its sons and daughters home,” a group representing the families of hostages said in a statement. “Netanyahu: Enough of the excuses. Enough of the spin. Enough of the abandonment.”

Israel’s health ministry said on Sunday that a forensic examination showed the hostages had been shot at close range sometime between Thursday and Friday morning. The Israeli military blamed Hamas for the killings, and the raw responses to their deaths put into focus the stark divisions within Israel over the war.

Many hostage families and their supporters have called for a deal with Hamas without delay, even if it leaves the group intact. Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have said a bad deal with Hamas could put Israel’s long-term security at risk.

On Sunday, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, appeared to protest Mr. Netanyahu’s approach to the cease-fire negotiations. On the social media platform X, he responded to news of the dead hostages by calling for the reversal of a cabinet decision last week to keep Israel’s forces in the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow strip of land along the border of Gaza and Egypt that Israeli officials say Hamas has used to smuggle in weapons.

Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister and a right-wing ally of Mr. Netanyahu, was critical of Mr. Gallant’s comment, saying that the cabinet would not allow for a “surrender deal” with Hamas that forsakes Israel’s security.

“Hamas murdered our hostages in cold blood in order to make us surrender, accept its demands and permit it to survive and rebuild its capabilities,” he said on X in response to Mr. Gallant’s post. “During difficult, heart-rending moments, common sense and national responsibility need to prevail and lead in our decision-making.”

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that in the cabinet meeting last week, Mr. Gallant had strongly opposed the decision to keep Israeli forces in the Philadelphi Corridor, insinuating that it was tantamount to abandoning the hostages. Hamas has demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, including from the corridor.

Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, publicly accused Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday of turning his back on the hostages and called for a strike on Monday.

“They were alive,” he said in a video statement. “Netanyahu and the cabinet of death decided not to save them. There still are living hostages there, and it’s still possible to do a deal. Netanyahu isn’t doing it for political reasons.”

Arnon Bar-David, the head of the Histadrut, Israel’s largest labor union, later called for members to take to the streets on Sunday night and on Monday morning.

“I came to the conclusion that only our intervention here might shock who needs to be shocked,” he said.

The Histadrut announced that workers at Israel’s biggest commercial airport, Ben Gurion, would join in the general strike starting at 8 a.m. on Monday. Eyal Yadin, chairman of the Transport and Port Workers’ Union in the Histadrut, said the shutdown would halt departing flights, with some exceptions. Arriving flights, the Histadrut said, would be not be affected.

Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu have argued that the Israeli leader has undermined efforts to reach a cease-fire deal with Hamas because doing so would anger his right-wing coalition allies and potentially collapse his government.

Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have made several attempts in recent weeks to bridge the gaps between Israel and Hamas, without success.

Both Israel and Hamas have been blamed at times for obstructing progress toward a cease-fire, but Mr. Netanyahu’s decision to set new conditions in July raised questions about whether the Israeli prime minister was truly interested in a deal.

Hamas, for its part, has requested its own extensive revisions throughout the process and has refused any truce that would see it give up overall power in Gaza. It has also defied international calls to release the hostages unconditionally.

Mr. Netanyahu spoke with the parents of one of the six hostages found dead, Alexander Lobanov, on Sunday, according to his office. It said in a statement that Mr. Netanyahu had apologized to the family and asked for “forgiveness for not succeeding in bringing” their son back alive.

The most recent proposals under negotiation for a cease-fire deal have involved a multiphase agreement, with the first phase involving the release of hostages categorized as women, children, the elderly, female soldiers and the ill and wounded.

Four of the six hostages whose bodies were recovered over the weekend were included on a list of those who Israel was demanding be released in the first phase of a three-phase agreement, according to an official Israeli document shared with mediators in late July and reviewed by The New York Times.

Israel’s list placed Eden Yerushalmi and Carmel Gat in the category of civilian women and children, while Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Almog Sarusi were included in the ill and wounded grouping, the document shows.

The Times reviewed the documents and confirmed their authenticity with officials from Israel and other parties involved in the negotiations. The Israeli prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In addition to a full withdrawal, Hamas has demanded that Israel agree to end the war. Mr. Netanyahu has said he wants a “partial deal” that would allow for Israel to resume the war after freeing some of the hostages.

Mr. Netanyahu has consistently blamed Hamas for blocking progress toward a deal. On Sunday, he accused Hamas of not negotiating seriously since December, and said the group’s acts “required Israel to do everything so it can’t perpetrate these atrocities again.”

Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

— Adam Rasgon and Ronen Bergman Adam Rasgon reported from Jerusalem and Ronen Bergman from Tel Aviv.

“They were brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists a short time before we reached them,” Admiral Hagari said.

Israel’s health ministry said later on Sunday that a forensic examination showed the hostages had been shot at close range sometime between Thursday and Friday morning.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “shocked to the depths” of his soul by what he called the “coldblooded murder” of the hostages.

“The heart of the entire nation is torn,” he said in a statement.

In an initial statement, Hamas did not directly address the accusations, but said responsibility for the deaths lay with Israel, which it blamed for the lack of an agreement to stop the fighting in Gaza. Hamas later claimed in a separate statement, without providing evidence, that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military’s bullets.

Some people in Israel also angrily blamed the government for the deaths, calling for protests over the government’s inability to secure a deal to bring the hostages home.

Israeli military officials had said on Saturday that six bodies were found during a military operation, without specifying whether they were hostages’ bodies.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said Sunday on CNN that the grim discovery was not the result of a “specific mission to release hostages,” but that Israeli forces had “some idea of hostages being held in the area.”

The dead were identified as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino. They ranged in age from 23 to 40, according to a group representing families of hostages.

Five of those captured had been at a dance music festival in southern Israel. The sixth, Ms. Gat, was taken from the nearby village of Be’eri.

Before the Israeli military’s announcement, President Biden issued a statement saying that Israel had found the bodies of six hostages, identifying one as Mr. Goldberg-Polin, a dual Israeli American citizen whose parents had campaigned around the world for the release of the captives.

“I am devastated and outraged. Hersh was among the innocents brutally attacked while attending a music festival for peace in Israel,” Mr. Biden said. “He lost his arm helping friends and strangers during Hamas’s savage massacre. He had just turned 23.”

Mr. Biden vowed to keep working toward an agreement to secure the release of the hostages. But he also issued a warning: “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.”

Mr. Goldberg-Polin was among the roughly 250 people who were abducted by Hamas and its allies during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. He was last seen in a video released by Hamas in April.

On Sunday, the Goldberg-Polin family confirmed his death “with broken hearts.”

The Israeli military said that the bodies of the six hostages were returned to Israeli territory.

More than 60 living hostages, and the bodies of about 35 other hostages believed to be dead, are still in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Adam Rasgon contributed reporting.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group of their relatives, identified the dead as Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino. It also provided ages.

More than 60 living hostages, and the bodies of about 35 other hostages believed to be dead, are still in Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Here is what we know about the six whose deaths were confirmed on Sunday.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23

Mr. Goldberg-Polin was a dual Israeli American citizen who was taken hostage from the festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7. His mother, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, had traveled the world since, advocating the release of the hostages.

“Hersh is a happy-go-lucky, laid-back, good-humored, respectful and curious person,” she said last month, when she spoke at the Democratic National Convention with her husband, Jon.

“He is a civilian,” she added. “He loves soccer, is wild about music and music festivals, and he has been obsessed with geography and travel since he was a little boy.”

Mr. Goldberg-Polin was born in Berkeley, Calif. His family moved to Israel when he was in elementary school. Grievously injured during the attack, Mr. Goldberg-Polin lost part of his left arm and was last seen in a video released by Hamas in April.

President Biden was among those who expressed condolences to Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s family. “I am devastated and outraged,” Mr. Biden said in a statement, adding, “He planned to travel the world.”

Carmel Gat, 40

Ms. Gat lived in Tel Aviv but was staying at her parents’ house in Be’eri, a kibbutz near the Gaza border, when she was taken hostage on Oct. 7. Her mother, Kinneret Gat, was killed in the attacks.

“Carmel was an occupational therapist, full of compassion and love, always finding ways to support and help others,” the forum wrote in a post on X. “She loved solo travel, meeting new people, live rock music concerts, and was particularly fond of Radiohead.”

Haaretz published a profile of Ms. Gat in January that said her closest friends had been holding regular yoga classes in her honor in Tel Aviv in what has become known as “Hostage Square.”

They also created a Spotify playlist of her favorite songs, Haaretz reported, calling it “a humorous, eclectic mix.”

“I remember us coming back to the kibbutz on weekends, putting music on and dancing,” Adi Zohar, a classmate, told the news outlet. “That’s her. Making a party out of things. Taking it easy.”

On Sunday, a cousin, Gil Dickmann, posted a photograph on X of a young Ms. Gat, wearing a pink shirt and holding a young baby, grinning at the camera. “Sorry Carmeli,” he wrote, adding, “If only you saw how your friends fought to get you back alive.”

Alexander Lobanov, 32

Mr. Lobanov, who went by Alex, lived in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to the forum.

It said he was working as a bar manager at the festival when the attack began and that witnesses said Mr. Lobanov helped evacuate people.

He and his wife, Michal, had two children: Tom, who is 2, and Kai, who is five months old and was born when Mr. Lobanov was in captivity in Gaza, Haaretz reported.

Mr. Lobanov also held Russian citizenship, according to Russia’s ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov.

“We mourn together with the entire family,” he said in a statement.

Ori Danino, 25

Ori Danino was from Jerusalem and was planning to study electrical engineering, Haaretz reported.

The oldest of five children, Mr. Danino had escaped the music festival but had gone back to help other people when he was captured, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum wrote on X.

“He was a fighter,” his partner, Liel Avraham, said on Israeli radio after learning of his death, The Jerusalem Post reported Sunday. She called him a “hero” who “excelled in everything he did.”

Ms. Avraham had posted about Mr. Danino on social media during his captivity. On April 7, she shared a picture of him kissing her on Instagram and in the caption teased him for losing to her at Backgammon and for letting his morning alarm ring.

Four weeks ago, she posted a photo of the two of them with the caption: “I’m waiting for you.”

Almog Sarusi, 27

Mr. Sarusi was from Ra’anana, a city north of Tel Aviv, according to Haaretz. It said he was at the music festival with his longtime girlfriend and had stayed by her side after she was wounded in the attack.

She died, and he was captured.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum described him on X as “a vibrant, positive person who loved traveling around Israel in his white jeep with his guitar.”

Eden Yerushalmi, 24

Ms. Yerushalmi was “a vibrant young woman with many friends and hobbies,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum wrote on X. “Eden loved spending summer days at the beach playing paddleball, attending parties, and was studying to become a Pilates instructor.”

In November, Ms. Yerushalmi’s sisters lit candles for her in New York City at the gravesite of a major spiritual leader in Judaism. They giggled at the time, trying to explain her nickname — “Opossum” — an old inside joke the sisters could no longer recall. Relatives of Ms. Yerushalmi had also traveled to Paris and Washington to press for the release of the hostages.

In a video posted in April, Ms. Yerushalmi’s sisters said she was a waitress in Tel Aviv who loved to make TikTok videos, rode a motorcycle and was “always the life of the party.”

“She’s very friendly,” they said in another video, posted in July. “She lives life to the fullest.”

Aaron Boxerman, Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.

Although the vaccination drive officially began early Sunday, Gazan health authorities gave some doses to children on Saturday at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis, according to reports in Palestinian news media. Videos showed doctors and health workers squeezing droplets of the poliovirus vaccine into the mouths of children who were being treated at the hospital.

“I knew about this campaign by chance. I was frightened when I heard the word polio,” said Maysaa Abu Daqqa, a mother of a 9-year-old, Habib Nizam. Ms. Abu Daqqa was waiting in a patients’ room at Nasser Hospital. “When I saw other women accepting the vaccinations for their children, I was encouraged to follow them,” she said.

Both Hamas and Israel agreed to the pauses in the fighting to allow the vaccinations to take place, but the campaign will be tricky to execute. With much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, and some 90 percent of the enclave’s roughly two million residents having repeatedly fled Israeli bombardment, it may be impossible to ensure the immunization of all of the enclave’s estimated 640,000 children under age 10.

“This is a race against time,” Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the main U.N. agency in charge of aiding Palestinians, said in a post on X.

For families seeking to get their children vaccinated, the challenges are layered and fraught: Not only must they trust that the cessations in fighting will hold, but many will have to find transportation, navigate blocked and broken roads and expose themselves to danger and widespread lawlessness to reach the vaccination sites.

The 2,100 people trained to conduct the vaccination drive will face risks, too, including anxieties over a history of deadly assaults on aid workers since the war began.

At a news briefing at Nasser Hospital on Saturday, Dr. Bassam Abu Hamad, a member of the polio campaign committee in Gaza, tried to encourage families to get their children vaccinated.

Acknowledging potential concerns some parents might have, he said that the vaccine “is safe and rarely has any side effects,” and urged mothers to “convince each other” to vaccinate their children.

“At first, we were warned by some people that this would harm our children,” said Yousif al-Saqqa, a 31-year-old displaced father who first heard about the campaign on social media. But after listening to encouraging remarks by the Palestinian health minister in Ramallah, Mr. al-Saqqa took his 4-year-old daughter, Alaa, to receive it on Sunday, even though she was vaccinated at 2 months old, he said.

Poliovirus, which is highly contagious, can cause paralysis and death in the unvaccinated. Largely eradicated around the world by decades of public health campaigns, it can thrive in unsanitary conditions and in places where vaccination rates are not high enough. Such rates in Gaza, which health officials have said were at about 99 percent as recently as 2022, have dropped significantly among babies because of the war.

The vaccine drive will be conducted through staggered pauses of fighting in different regions of the Gaza Strip, a process that is intended to allow aid workers to try to vaccinate children at roughly 700 medical facilities, mobile clinics and shelters.

Israel will “allow a humanitarian corridor” for vaccination personnel to travel and will establish “designated safe areas” for them to administer vaccines during certain hours, the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement on Saturday.

“Israel views with importance the prevention of a polio outbreak in the Gaza Strip, including for the purpose of preventing the spread of diseases in the region,” it said.

The campaign is expected to last for three days, with each humanitarian pause in place from early morning until midafternoon. There will be an option to extend the vaccine drive if necessary, and then local health officials will shift their focus to southern Gaza. The northern region of the enclave will be treated last, according to the staggered schedule announced by global health officials on Thursday.

Gazans received a text message from the health ministry on Saturday, announcing the beginning of the vaccination drive for children under 10 years old across different parts of the strip starting on Sunday.

The vaccination campaign kicked off in central Gaza, where the health ministry said clinics, hospitals and U.N. schools would be offering the vaccine during the hours of the humanitarian pause, from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Early indications suggested that Sunday’s vaccinations were carried out unimpeded. UNRWA, the main U.N. agency in charge of aiding Palestinians, said on Sunday afternoon that the humanitarian pauses “were respected” in the areas where vaccinations were taking place.

“The turnout for the first day of the campaign was positive and thousands of children and families were seen lining up ready to receive their vaccine,” it said in a statement.

Yet Israeli strikes continued across the strip, including in central Gaza later in the day, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense, the emergency services agency. It said that at least 34 people had been killed across Gaza as of Sunday evening, including 11 killed in an Israeli strike on a school building sheltering displaced people in Gaza City.

The World Health Organization and UNICEF, the U.N. children’s fund, have rushed more than 1.2 million doses of oral polio vaccines to the region, and say that another 400,000 doses are on their way.

Dr. Majdi Dheir, the head of the campaign against polio in Gaza, said more than 2,700 people had been trained by experts from the health ministry, the W.H.O. and UNICEF to carry out the vaccinations.

Once the first round of vaccinations is complete, a booster round of immunizations will need to be administered four weeks later. Israel has agreed to repeat the staggered humanitarian pauses for the boosters as well.

The scale, ambition and logistics of the vaccination campaign are unprecedented in the Gaza war. The fact that the plan for it came together in only six weeks of negotiations after the virus was first detected is a sign of just how serious public health officials believe an outbreak could be.

Because polio can strike and spread rapidly, it is not only a risk to Gazans but also could spread to neighboring Egypt or Israel, and potentially beyond. Whether the disease can now be contained is impossible to determine, health experts have said.

Israel has begun to offer booster vaccines for soldiers operating in Gaza..

Polio is transmitted by contact with the feces of an infected person, or consumption of water or food contaminated by fecal matter.

Aid and rights groups say Israeli strikes have badly damaged access to sanitation and clean water in Gaza, not only risking the spread of preventable diseases but also possibly constituting a war crime. In June, the aid organization Oxfam released a report accusing Israel of destroying more than two-thirds of the enclave’s sewage pumps and all of its wastewater treatment plants.

After the virus was detected in sewage samples from Gaza in July, the W.H.O. director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned that the conditions created “the perfect environment for diseases like polio to spread.”

Such warnings became more urgent when, two weeks ago, Gaza confirmed its first case of polio in 25 years, in a nearly 1-year-old boy.

Facing repeated displacement, tens of thousands of Gazans have crammed themselves into camps with little access to water and sanitation. As a result, some 340,000 tons of solid waste have accumulated in or around populated areas, according to a U.N. assessment.

“My daughter already got that vaccine, so I was hesitant to take this step,” said Mohammed Abu Hashish, a 31-year-old Arabic teacher sheltering in a tent in Deir al Balah in central Gaza. But he said he decided to go forward with it on Sunday out of fear for his 2-year-old daughter’s health and the risk of infection between her and her cousins.

Mamdouh Abu Nadi, who also took his 2-year-old daughter, Ikhlas, and his 10-year-old son, Kareem, to get vaccinated in Deir al Balah on Sunday, said that all of the children in the area where they are sheltering went to get the vaccine.

He added that he had also encouraged his extended family members to do the same “for the safety of all the children.”

Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

One of the officers was the father of a police officer who was killed during Hamas’s Oct. 7 raid on southern Israel that started the war in Gaza, according to the police.

The episode followed two attacks on Friday night by Palestinian militants, one of whom attempted to detonate a car bomb at a busy intersection in the southern West Bank, according to the Israeli military. In the second attack, a Palestinian drove into a nearby Israeli settlement, prompting a car chase and a shootout that caused an explosion in the Palestinian’s car, the military said.

The Israeli military raided three major cities in the northern West Bank last week, killing at least 22 people, according to the Palestinian health authorities. The military said the operation was aimed at quelling armed Palestinian groups, but critics warned that the death and destruction caused by the raids risked encouraging the same violence that they aimed to reduce.

Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967 after capturing it from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli war that year. Israel has since built hundreds of settlements in the territory, which are considered illegal by most of the world. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish Israelis now live under military protection in the West Bank, interspersed among roughly three million Palestinians who generally want the territory to form the backbone of a future Palestinian state.

Since Wednesday, hundreds of Israeli soldiers have surged through the Palestinian cities of Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, clashing with militants and churning up the streets with bulldozers in search of improvised explosive devices. The chaos left many people trapped in their homes without running water or internet.

The Israeli military said it had killed more than 20 militants in those raids, and militant groups said many of the slain were members of their organizations. One family said that a relative with mental illness was shot dead during the raid, his body left untended for hours during the violence.

By Sunday morning, troops had withdrawn from Tulkarem and Tubas.

In Jenin, they were still surrounding one of the city’s major hospitals, closely inspecting everyone who arrived and left, for the fifth consecutive day, said Wissam Bakr, the hospital director. The Israeli military said it had deployed troops around the hospital to prevent militants from entering it in an attempt to seek cover.

With the power cut, the hospital was making do with backup generators, said Dr. Bakr. Scores of patients, particularly those on dialysis, were being transferred to other hospitals, as the generators were incapable of powering all of the wards, he added. Before the raid, there had been roughly 180 patients in the hospital; now there were about 50 left, according to Dr. Bakr.

In the early 2000s, Dr. Bakr was working at the same hospital when Israeli forces swept into Jenin, part of a major crackdown in response to a surge in Palestinian suicide bombings that were planned by groups based in the city, he said. At that time, Israeli soldiers also surrounded the hospital for nearly two weeks before withdrawing, Dr. Bakr recalled.

“History is repeating itself,” he said.

The tense atmosphere across the territory has been exacerbated in recent weeks by rising violence by Israeli extremists, some of whom have also attempted to seize land used and owned by Palestinians. In mid-August, a group of Israeli arsonists surged through a Palestinian village, setting fire to vehicles and property.

Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.

But he was among the six hostages whose bodies were found in a tunnel in Gaza over the weekend. In a statement, President Biden said they were killed by Hamas.

“With broken hearts, the Goldberg-Polin family is devastated to announce the death of their beloved son and brother, Hersh,” his family said in a statement. Family members declined to be interviewed for this article, asking for privacy.

On Sunday, tributes to Mr. Goldberg-Polin, who was 23 and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, poured in from many pockets of America. People who knew him expressed immense grief and recalled moments they shared. To many across the country, he had become a symbol of hope.

Andy Feig, a rabbi in Los Angeles, grew up with Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s father and later spent time with the family in California. He said Mr. Goldberg-Polin “exuded the best traits” of his parents: caring, fun-loving and kind.

“In Yiddish, you say ‘mensch,’” meaning a person with integrity,” Rabbi Feig said, adding, “Hersh was that kind of kid.”

Jeffrey Abrams, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Los Angeles, recalled a fond memory of Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s family in 2010. Mr. Abrams was visiting Israel with his wife and three young sons, and after meeting Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s parents through a mutual friend, the family invited them to their apartment for a Sabbath dinner.

“Out of nowhere, this nice, lovely young family, with similarly aged kids, expressed one of the core Jewish values, which is to welcome the stranger,” Mr. Abrams said. He remembered Mr. Goldberg-Polin, then 9, as a “boy with big curly hair riding his tricycle with glee.”

Orly Lewis, chief executive of the Weinstein Jewish Community Center in Richmond, Va., which has a preschool Mr. Goldberg-Polin attended, also remembered him as a fun, open-minded child. Ms. Lewis said that she and others in the city’s tight-knit Jewish community had admired his parents’ advocacy in the past several months.

“There’s a saying in Hebrew: Who saves one life, it’s as if they saved the entire world,” she said. “I think the whole world was watching how much they tried to bring Hersh home, and the rest of the hostages.”

Mr. Goldberg-Polin was abducted while attending a music festival, and he lost a part of his arm while defending an emergency shelter from Hamas gunmen. In the 11 months since he was taken captive, his parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, became two of the most outspoken advocates for the hostages’ release. They have delivered speeches, met with elected officials and the Pope, and even addressed the Democratic National Convention in their hometown last month. At the convention, Ms. Goldberg and Mr. Polin each wore a piece of tape on which the number 320 was written, representing the number of days their son had been in captivity.

“Hersh, if you can hear us, we love you,” Ms. Goldberg said at the convention. “Stay strong. Survive.”

For Yael Nidam Kirsht, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, the news felt personal. Her sister and brother-in-law were abducted from the kibbutz where they lived on Oct. 7. Her sister was released in November, but her brother-in-law was killed in captivity this year, she said.

Ms. Nidam Kirsht had continued to find meaning in something Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s mother often said: “Hope is mandatory.” Just last week, Ms. Nidam Kirsht joined dozens at a vigil honoring Mr. Goldberg-Polin in Berkeley, where he was born.

“I was really hoping that what happened to us wouldn’t happen to Hersh,” she said.

To many who didn’t know Mr. Goldberg-Polin or his family personally, the news still cut deep. Susan Gordon Newman, a 52-year-old marketing professional in Chicago, where Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s parents were born and raised, said that as a mother of two, she was “devastated” for the family.

“There was so much hope for almost a year and now there’s no hope,” she said.

Some Americans lamented the ongoing war and its overall impact. Christine Blevins, a 50-year-old property manager from Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, said, “All of it is horrible and has gone on way too long. It has created further division in our country.”

There are still seven U.S. citizens in captivity by Hamas. Israeli authorities say more than 60 living hostages and the bodies of about 35 people believed to be dead remain in Gaza. The Israeli military on Sunday said that the six whose bodies were found this weekend were fatally shot at close range by Hamas.

Hamas initially did not directly address the accusations but said in a statement that responsibility for the deaths lay with Israel. Later, without providing evidence, the group said in another statement that the hostages were killed by the Israeli military’s bullets.

In the Chicago suburb of Skokie, where Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s family once lived, Alfred Aghapour, 70, who lived two doors down from the family and attended the same synagogue, said he had been praying for Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s release. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said.

Rabbi Leonard Matanky, head of Chicago’s Ida Crown Jewish Academy — where Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s parents both graduated from — has known the family for decades. Tragedy in the world often seems to be anonymous and far away, he said, but for the Ida Crown community, Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s capture was “very close.”

After Oct. 7, Rabbi Matanky said, the school displayed a photograph of Mr. Goldberg-Polin and a prayer for the safety of the hostages around the building. When students return this week, his photo will still be there.

At a vigil Sunday night in Manhattan near Columbus Circle, a large crowd gathered to light candles, say prayers and sing. One of the songs, “Kol Ha’Olam Kulo,” contains a line that can be translated as “the whole world is a narrow bridge, but the most important thing is not to fear at all.”

There, the families of Edan Alexander and Omer Neutra, two other Israeli-American hostages, described the despair after learning of the deaths of Mr. Goldberg-Polin and the five others.

“It’s been a really, really tough day,” said Orna Neutra, Mr. Neutra’s mother. She said that Mr. Goldberg-Polin was close in age to her son, and that her family had become extremely close with Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s parents. But despite their grief, she added, they still inspired strength and faith that an agreement would be reached to bring the remaining hostages home.

“The news of Hersh’s death is devastating,” she said. “And yet, even today, Rachel chose to share words of hope with us, praying that this tragedy stops the madness and brings the deal now.”

Robert Chiarito and Olivia Bensimon contributed reporting.