Israel could have ended the Gaza war a year earlier and freed the captives, says its own ex-negotiator

TEL AVIV: Israel could have ended the Gaza war at least a year earlier and brought all its captives home alive — but its government repeatedly chose to keep fighting instead. That is not the charge of Israel's critics. It is the testimony of the man who spent two years trying to bring the hostages home. Retired Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, who headed the IDF's Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters from October 2023 to October 2025, told a Washington Institute forum this week that a comprehensive deal was possible "maybe a year earlier" — and that more captives could have returned alive. Alon's most damning accusation concerns the cabinet's choices. When forums led by the prime minister faced a choice between a partial agreement and a broader one, he said, "the choice [up until fall 2025] was a partial agreement to allow for continuing the war." There was, he acknowledged, "some logic to that." But "strategically, to manage the war for more than two years until, in effect, an American administration forced us to end it was not the optimal path — not in terms of the length of the war or the price we paid in every respect." In other words: Israel's leaders prioritised continued military operations over bringing hostages home alive. The war ended only when the United States — under President Donald Trump, whose 20-point plan produced the October 10 ceasefire — forced its conclusion. The human cost, Alon said, must not be forgotten: "about 40 hostages who were abducted alive died in captivity." Israel paid, in his words, "a heavy price in soldiers killed, perhaps even some hostages killed, and immense costs in blood and money that were not necessary." Alon also denied the government's ministers the credit they have claimed. "I don't think Minister Smotrich, who opposed some of the agreements at different stages, can take credit for bringing back all the hostages," he said of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. Nor, he implied, could Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It was not Alon's first such warning. In December 2025 he told the daily Yedioth Ahronoth that many captives who arrived alive in Gaza died in Israeli strikes on the buildings where they were held — "Israeli fire killed most of the hostages in Jabalia due to intelligence gaps." For two years, the families of the captives filled Tel Aviv's Hostages Square every Saturday night, begging their government to choose a deal. Their own negotiator has now confirmed what they long suspected: the deal was there. The government chose the war.