'It's time for a new leader' Israelis push for action to free hostages and slam Netanyahu

Dressed in a T-shirt bearing the smiling face of her missing granddaughter D Roni, Zehava Eshel addressed a crowd of protesters gathered in front of the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv. "The country was supposed to protect her," Eshel said, her voice sounding hoarse.

- Ruth Michaelson, Quique Kierszenbaum

The Israeli military have labelled 19-year-old Roni Eshel, an IDF soldier stationed at a base near the kibbutz of Nahal Oz, as a missing person. The Eshel family only know that Roni last texted her mother in the early hours of 7 October, during the unprecedented incursion by Hamas militants that has so far left more than 1,300 Israelis dead.

Since then, Eshel said, they have heard very little news. "Where is the state?" she said, despairing over what she said was a lack of communication from the Israeli military and the government.

Soldiers like Roni, who was stationed near the fortified threelayer fence that surrounds the Gaza strip, were supposed to be "the eyes of the country," but no one had listened when they said they had seen unusual movements on the border, as so much of the Israeli military had been deployed to the West Bank, she added. "Where are the ministers, where is the prime minister? These high-ranking officers, where are they?" The teenager is thought to be one of up to 250 hostages captured by militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza. Her grandmother joined other families of hostages and missing people at a protest yesterday to demand that the government took action to free those held - including potential prisoner swaps for thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails, as demanded by their captors.

The Israeli public is fiercely divided over how the state has handled the breach of its security, and the hostage issue has become a lightning rod for criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's response to the crisis.

Many of the hostages' families are careful to temper their criticism, fearful that being too outspoken might hamper the government's responsiveness.