Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu on Mon­day pushed back against a new wave of pres­sure to reach a cease-fire deal in Gaza af­ter hun­dreds of thou­sands of Is­raelis protest­ed and went on strike and U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden said he need­ed to do more af­ter near­ly 11 months of fight­ing.

In his first pub­lic ad­dress since Sun­day’s mass protests showed many Is­raelis’ fu­ri­ous re­sponse to the dis­cov­ery of six more dead hostages, Ne­tanyahu said he will con­tin­ue to in­sist on a de­mand that has emerged as a ma­jor stick­ing point in talks — con­tin­ued Is­raeli con­trol of the Philadel­phi cor­ri­dor, a nar­row band along Gaza’s bor­der with Egypt where Is­rael con­tends Hamas smug­gles weapons in­to Gaza. Egypt and Hamas de­ny it.

Ne­tanyahu called the cor­ri­dor vi­tal to en­sur­ing Hamas can­not rearm via tun­nels. “This is the oxy­gen of Hamas,” he said.

And he added: “No one is more com­mit­ted to free­ing the hostages than me. But no one will preach to me.”

Is­raelis had poured in­to the streets late Sun­day in grief and anger in what ap­peared to be the largest protest since the start of the war. The fam­i­lies and much of the pub­lic blamed Ne­tanyahu, say­ing the hostages could have been re­turned alive in a deal with Hamas. A rare gen­er­al strike was held across the coun­try on Mon­day.

Late Mon­day, sev­er­al thou­sand demon­stra­tors gath­ered out­side Ne­tanyahu’s pri­vate home in cen­tral Jerusalem, chant­i­ng, “Deal. Now.” and car­ry­ing coffins draped in the Is­raeli flag. Scuf­fles broke out when po­lice snatched away the coffins, and sev­er­al pro­test­ers were ar­rest­ed. Thou­sands more marched out­side Ne­tanyahu’s Likud par­ty in Tel Aviv, ac­cord­ing to Is­raeli me­dia.

But oth­ers sup­port Ne­tanyahu’s dri­ve to con­tin­ue the cam­paign in Gaza, which was trig­gered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack in­to Is­rael and has killed tens of thou­sands of Pales­tini­ans in the ter­ri­to­ry. Ne­tanyahu says the as­sault will force mil­i­tants to give in to Is­raeli de­mands, po­ten­tial­ly fa­cil­i­tate res­cue op­er­a­tions and ul­ti­mate­ly an­ni­hi­late the group.

Key al­ly the Unit­ed States is show­ing im­pa­tience. Biden spoke to re­porters as he ar­rived at the White House for a Sit­u­a­tion Room meet­ing with the U.S. me­di­a­tion team in the ne­go­ti­a­tions. Asked if Ne­tanyahu was do­ing enough, Biden re­spond­ed, “No.”

He in­sist­ed that ne­go­tia­tors re­main “very close” to a deal, adding, “Hope springs eter­nal.”

Hamas has ac­cused Is­rael of drag­ging out months of ne­go­ti­a­tions by is­su­ing new de­mands, in­clud­ing for last­ing Is­raeli con­trol over the Philadel­phi cor­ri­dor and a sec­ond cor­ri­dor run­ning across Gaza. Hamas has of­fered to re­lease all hostages in re­turn for an end to the war, the com­plete with­draw­al of Is­raeli forces and the re­lease of a large num­ber of Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers, in­clud­ing high-pro­file mil­i­tants — broad­ly the terms called for un­der an out­line for a deal put for­ward by Biden in Ju­ly.

Ne­tanyahu has pledged “to­tal vic­to­ry” over Hamas and blames it for the fail­ure of the ne­go­ti­a­tions. On Mon­day, he said he is ready to car­ry out the first phase of the cease-fire — a plan that would in­clude the re­lease of some hostages, a par­tial pull­out of Is­raeli troops and the re­lease of some pris­on­ers held by Is­rael. But he re­ject­ed a full with­draw­al from Gaza, say­ing he saw no oth­er par­ty that could con­trol Gaza’s bor­ders.

Is­raeli me­dia have re­port­ed deep dif­fer­ences be­tween Ne­tanyahu and top se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing De­fense Min­is­ter Yoav Gal­lant, who say the time is ripe for a cease-fire.

An of­fi­cial con­firmed a shout­ing match be­tween Gal­lant and Ne­tanyahu at a se­cu­ri­ty cab­i­net meet­ing Thurs­day, where Ne­tanyahu held a vote in fa­vor of main­tain­ing con­trol over the Philadel­phi cor­ri­dor.

Gal­lant cast the lone vote against the pro­pos­al, say­ing Ne­tanyahu was fa­vor­ing bor­der arrange­ments over the lives of hostages. The of­fi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss the closed-door meet­ing. Gal­lant on Sun­day called on the se­cu­ri­ty cab­i­net to over­turn the de­ci­sion.

Khalil al-Hayya, the Hamas of­fi­cial lead­ing the ne­go­ti­a­tions, told the Qatari net­work Al Jazeera late Sun­day that Ne­tanyahu had deemed keep­ing the Philadel­phi cor­ri­dor “more im­por­tant” than win­ning the hostages’ re­lease.

Al-Hayya al­so said Hamas had of­fered “great flex­i­bil­i­ty,” in­clud­ing re­duc­ing its de­mand for 500 Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers to be re­leased in ex­change for each cap­tive Is­raeli sol­dier to 50, and from 250 Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers or each Is­raeli civil­ian hostage to 30. He ac­cused Is­rael of in­tro­duc­ing new con­di­tions in­clud­ing in­creas­ing the num­ber of pris­on­ers who would be de­port­ed up­on re­lease and ban­ning the re­lease of el­der­ly or ill pris­on­ers serv­ing life sen­tences.

Is­rael said the six hostages found dead in Gaza were killed by Hamas short­ly be­fore Is­raeli forces ar­rived in the tun­nel where they were held.

Hamas’ armed wing, the al-Qas­sam Brigades, ap­peared to say in a state­ment Mon­day that it now had a pol­i­cy of killing any hostages that Is­rael tries to res­cue. It said that af­ter Is­raeli troops res­cued four hostages in a dead­ly raid in June, it is­sued new or­ders to its fight­ers guard­ing hostages on how to deal with them if Is­raeli troops ap­proach. It said that Ne­tanyahu’s in­sis­tence on us­ing mil­i­tary pres­sure in­stead of reach­ing a deal “will mean they (hostages) will re­turn to their fam­i­lies in coffins.”

Three of the slain hostages were re­port­ed­ly among those who would have been re­leased in the first phase of the cease-fire pro­pos­al out­lined by Biden in Ju­ly.

Thou­sands at­tend­ed the fu­ner­al Mon­day for one of the six, Is­raeli-Amer­i­can Hersh Gold­berg-Polin. He was one of the best-known hostages, with his par­ents lead­ing a high-pro­file cam­paign for the cap­tives’ re­lease, meet­ing with Biden and Pope Fran­cis and ad­dress­ing the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Na­tion­al Con­ven­tion last month.

The gen­er­al strike, called by Is­rael’s largest trade union, the His­tadrut, end­ed ear­ly af­ter a la­bor court ac­cept­ed a pe­ti­tion from the gov­ern­ment call­ing it po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

It was the first such strike since the start of the war, aim­ing to shut down or dis­rupt ma­jor sec­tors of the econ­o­my, in­clud­ing bank­ing and health care. Some flights at Is­rael’s main in­ter­na­tion­al air­port, Ben-Gu­ri­on, ei­ther de­part­ed ear­ly or were slight­ly de­layed.

“There’s no need to pun­ish the whole state of Is­rael be­cause of what is hap­pen­ing, over­all, it is a vic­to­ry for Hamas,” said one pas­sen­ger, Am­rani Yi­gal.

But in Jerusalem, res­i­dent Avi Lavi said that “I think this is fair, the time has come to stand and to wake up, to do every­thing for the hostages to come back alive.”

Mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties in Is­rael’s pop­u­lat­ed cen­tral area, in­clud­ing Tel Aviv, par­tic­i­pat­ed. Oth­ers, in­clud­ing Jerusalem, did not.

Some 250 hostages were tak­en on Oct. 7. More than 100 were freed dur­ing a cease-fire in No­vem­ber in ex­change for the re­lease of Pales­tini­ans im­pris­oned by Is­rael. Eight have been res­cued by Is­raeli forces. Is­raeli troops mis­tak­en­ly killed three Is­raelis who es­caped cap­tiv­i­ty in De­cem­ber.

Rough­ly 100 hostages re­main in Gaza, a third of whom are be­lieved to be dead.

Hamas-led mil­i­tants killed some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, when they stormed in­to south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7. Is­rael’s re­tal­ia­to­ry of­fen­sive in Gaza has killed over 40,000 Pales­tini­ans, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal health of­fi­cials, who do not say how many were mil­i­tants.

The war has dis­placed the vast ma­jor­i­ty of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple, of­ten mul­ti­ple times, and plunged the be­sieged ter­ri­to­ry in­to a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cat­a­stro­phe, in­clud­ing new fears of a po­lio out­break.

Mean­while, Is­rael con­tin­ued its six-day raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Is­raeli-oc­cu­pied West Bank. AP re­porters saw bull­doz­ers tear­ing up roads. The Pales­tin­ian Red Cres­cent said Is­raeli forces were block­ing their am­bu­lances from reach­ing the wound­ed.

Pales­tini­ans in a town out­side Jenin held a fu­ner­al for a 58-year-old man, Ay­man Abed, who was ar­rest­ed the day be­fore and died in Is­raeli cus­tody. The Is­raeli mil­i­tary said he died from a “car­diac event,” but did not pro­vide de­tails. Hu­man rights groups have re­port­ed abus­es of Pales­tini­ans de­tained by Is­rael, and the mil­i­tary has con­firmed the deaths of at least 36 Pales­tini­ans in its de­ten­tion cen­tres since Oc­to­ber.

Is­rael says it has killed 14 mil­i­tants in Jenin and ar­rest­ed 25 mil­i­tants. Pales­tin­ian health of­fi­cials say at least 29 peo­ple have been killed, in­clud­ing five chil­dren.

Mo­han­nad Ha­jj Hus­sein, a Jenin res­i­dent, said elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter were cut off. “We are ready to live by can­dle­light and we will feed our chil­dren from our bod­ies and teach them re­sis­tance and stead­fast­ness in this land,” he said. “We will re­build what the oc­cu­pa­tion de­stroyed and we will not kneel.” —TEL AVIV, Is­rael (AP)

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Sto­ry by TIA GOLD­EN­BERG | As­so­ci­at­ed Press.  AP writ­ers Ju­lia Frankel and Melanie Lid­man in Jerusalem and Zeke Miller in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed.