Israel could’ve ended Gaza war, freed captives sooner: Israel ex-negotiator

Retired General Nitzan Alon says more captives could have been returned alive and a deal was possible ‘maybe a year earlier’.

A former Israeli general who was the army’s point person for hostage negotiations at the beginning of the Gaza war says that a deal to return all Israeli captives could have been achieved “much earlier” than October 2025 but it was prolonged unnecessarily.

He was speaking during a Washington Institute for Near East Policy webcast marking three years since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel preceding the genocidal war that has killed over 74,000 Palestinians.

He called the October 2025 “ceasefire” a “strategic achievement” that has since curbed Hamas’s military power. But he said it could have been secured much sooner with “maybe some hostages that got killed or murdered during their captivity [coming] back home alive.”

“We could have – and we should have – shortened the war, brought all the hostages back, maybe a year earlier, and moved forward and maybe, you know, saved thousands of lives on both sides,” Alon told the panel discussion organised by the United States think-tank.

Alon had made similar comments in July, when he also criticised Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, saying Smotrich had opposed some of the agreements put forward at various stages and therefore could not take credit for the return of all the captives.

Speaking to Al Jazeera on Friday, former Israeli diplomat Alan Pinkas said Netanyahu had stalled the end of the war.

“It took almost two years before the hostages were returned, so it’s not just a missed opportunity, it’s tragic.”

Al-Thani said Doha reached out to Israeli officials “on day one … Our message was very clear. They [Hamas leaders] are asking for a window of ceasefire to get the civilians out,” Sheikh Mohammed said in an interview with Piers Morgan. “And basically, they [the Israelis] were not interested to engage in the idea.”

Pinkas said Alon’s comments were unlikely to influence the outcome of the vote as polls already “reflect public anger” over the Netanyahu government’s failure to prevent the Hamas attacks.