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

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.

“I think that we could [have gotten to] this point much earlier, maybe a year earlier or so, without any major implication on the other strategic goals of the war,” Major General Nitzan Alon said on Friday. “We missed it, actually. The war was too long.”

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.

Alon referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Israel must achieve “total victory” before signing a deal as “false”.

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.”

Hamas and Israel carried out a prisoner exchange deal in October 2025 under a ceasefire agreement that saw the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli jails and 20 Israeli captives held in the Gaza Strip.

“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.

‘Not just a missed opportunity, it’s tragic’

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

“A deal was possible very soon after the Hamas attack in October 2023,” he said.

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

Earlier this week, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said Israeli officials “rejected to entertain the idea” of a Hamas proposal to release all captives in exchange for a limited ceasefire soon after the attacks.

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.”

Alon’s latest comments come less than a month before Israel’s October 27 legislative election, with polls showing the political battle remains at knife-edge.

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.

A report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz claiming that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan had warned Netanyahu about a possible attack also sparked outrage across Israel last month.

Netanyahu said he would sue the outlet over its report, which he described as “fabricated” and “false”.