More than 150,000 Israelis attended a left wing demonstration in Tel Aviv on Saturday night under the banner "get out of Gaza and start talking," local reports said.

Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres told the crows that 80 percent of Israeli want peace and just one percent are trying to block it.

Yossi Beilin, chairman of the dovish Yahad Party, said that forthe past three years the peace camp has been dormant and "today it finally awoke."

One Nation chairman Amir Peretz called for a resumption of peacetalks, saying that diplomatic and social affairs could not beseparated.

The event took place under heavy security as some 1,300 police officers and volunteer security guards were patrolling. Before the demonstration, the organizers rejected calls from politicians on the right to postpone the rally in the wake of the recent violence in the Gaza Strip.