The Israel-Hamas War could have ended a year earlier with more disarmament of Hamas, former coordinator of hostage negotiations Maj.-Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon said Wednesday.
By prolonging the war unnecessarily, many soldiers and up to 40 hostages might have died unnecessarily, he said.
Throughout the two years that Alon was the lead coordinator for returning the Israeli hostages held by Hamas since the October 7 massacre in 2023 until October 2025, there were times that he supported proposed deals, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government did not agree to the terms.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently claimed credit for returning the hostages, citing his aggressive position regarding the war and Hamas.
In response, Alon said: “What can I say about this statement? Even when we talk about having returned all of the hostages, about 40 hostages who were taken alive were killed and murdered, and some of them by our own power, others by their abductors, and some could not survive the conditions [of captivity]. Some other different decisions and negotiations could have returned them alive. That is definitive, and we should not forget it.”
War continued unnecessarily, no credit for Netanyahu, Smotrich in hostage deal
Smotrich objected to numerous proposed deals and said he could not take credit for bringing the hostages home.
Furthermore, Alon rejected the idea that Netanyahu, Smotrich, and the cabinet should be credited for their insistence on returning all the hostages rather than interim partial deals.
Netanyahu and the cabinet, along with Smotrich, had insisted on partial deals so they could continue the war until their fake absolute victory was no longer a serious position, he said.
“When the alternative of partial deals was put on the table before the cabinet, and the issue was partial versus a broader agreement, the choice [up until fall 2025] was a partial agreement to allow for continuing the war,” he added.
US, Trump intervention credited for ending Gaza War
Alon essentially said Netanyahu and the government had opted against complete deals until fall 2024, when Hamas’s willingness to agree to partial deals forced them into accepting a full deal as their only option for trying to extend the war.
The intervention of US President Donald Trump had forced Netanyahu and the government to end the war; otherwise, they would have continued while still failing to achieve the disarmament of Hamas, he said.
Regarding Alon’s statements about earlier opportunities to resolve the war, senior Israeli officials in May 2025 and July-August 2024 told The Jerusalem Post that bringing home the hostages could have been achieved if Netanyahu and the government had been willing to end the war.
Others involved in the hostage negotiations have disputed this account. Even if Netanyahu was trying to continue the war, Hamas also had missed numerous opportunities to end the war when it believed it could obtain better terms.
Asked why he had not resigned from his role if he had so many objections to the government’s handling of the hostage issue, especially given that his main deputy did quit in protest, Alon said he had considered quitting earlier, but decided he could do more to fight for the hostages’ lives in his role – even with the cabinet making decisions he sometimes disagreed with – than if he was completely outside the decision-making process.
Alon, a former commander of IDF Central Command, said the government’s current official and unofficial policies were normalizing violent Jewish militias acting against Palestinian villages.
The new outposts and settlements that have been approved in Judea and Samaria threaten the possibility of having a contiguous Palestinian entity destabilizing the broader situation and making it more difficult to defend isolated Jewish areas, he said.