Former IDF hostage pointman says government favored fighting over release of captives

The war in Gaza could have ended a year earlier with the return of even more living hostages, the former IDF coordinator of hostage negotiations said. 

Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, former head of the IDF’s Hostages and Missing Persons Directorate, made the declaration while being interviewed at the Herzliya Conference, held at Reichman University, on Wednesday morning. 

“With the victories, or precisely with the gaps that remained for us in Gaza, we conducted a long war that could have been ended at least a year earlier,” Maj. Gen. Alon said. 

Alon also criticized Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who took credit for the hostages' return in comments on Sunday. 

“When talking about returning all the hostages, it should be remembered that about 40 hostages who were abducted alive were killed in captivity, and I don’t forget that.” 

“In certain places, with different functioning, decisions, or different negotiations, we might have been able to bring them back alive,” Maj. Gen. Alon continued. “Therefore, Minister Smotrich, who opposed some of the agreements at the various stages — I don’t think he can take credit for returning all the hostages.” 

Minister Smotrich had claimed a crucial role in Israel’s successes in the Gaza war in an appearance on the “All In” podcast Sunday morning. 

“I think I have a dramatic, even decisive, impact on the war,” Smotrich said. “I think that if not for me, the war in Gaza would have been halted even before Rafah,” he said, referring to the IDF’s offensive to capture the border city in May 2024. 

“Unlike how some are trying to portray me as some heartless person who doesn’t care about the hostages, I think it is thanks to me that all the hostages are here,” Smotrich had said, in a statement that drew immediate criticism from several hostages and hostage families. 

Alon explained that the cabinet rejected earlier agreements that could have returned more hostages in order to keep fighting. 

“The cabinet and the political leadership refused earlier, more complete deals, in the name of that total victory,” Alon claimed, saying, “The push for partial proposals in various forums or the alternative of a partial agreement and a broader one — the choice was for a partial agreement in order to allow the continuation of the fighting.” 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party responded by attacking General Allon, saying he "asked to surrender to Hamas's conditions, to withdraw from Gaza, to stop the war, and all this while he was releasing briefings from the most secret discussions and damaging the negotiations.” 

At various points during hostage negotiations, details of the talks which cast the coalition in a negative light were leaked to the press. Coalition politicians have accused several people, including war cabinet ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, of leaking those details. 

"It's good that Prime Minister Netanyahu didn't listen to him, because if he had listened to him, we wouldn't have completed the occupation of Rafah, the Philadelphi Corridor, the elimination of Nasrallah, Haniyeh, Deif, Operation Beeper, the establishment of the security zones, gaining control of most of the Gaza Strip, and the return of all our hostages to the last one," the Likud statement said. 

Alon’s remarks also drew a harsh response by Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who claimed that it was Alon who was responsible for the deaths of the hostages by not favoring a harsher military response. 

“In my view, he is guilty of people being murdered and kidnapped,” Eliyahu said in an interview with Army Radio Thursday morning. 

Minister Eliyahu also claimed that “they [the hostages] were murdered because of Nitzan Alon and this approach that puts people on the fence.” 

“If we had followed him, we would now be with Hamas on the [security] fences, and then what would have happened? Who would be guilty? Nitzan Alon and his group are guilty of the October 7 massacre.” 

In response to Eliyahu’s comments, former IDF Chief of Staff and prime minister hopeful Gadi Eisenkot, chairman of the “Yashar” party, attacked the minister. 

“1,000 days since the worst failure since the founding of the state, a minister in the failure government dares to sling mud and lie, accusing someone who was not in position that morning but immediately stepped up to help: Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, former head of the Hostages and Missing Persons Directorate of the massacre.” 

“Nitzan Alon is an Israeli hero and a person who brought about the rescue and saving of hostages, in complete contrast to an irresponsible minister whose colleagues in his party opposed deals to save hostages,” Eisenkot added.

“Nitzan, unlike them, was the one who looked the families straight in the eye when their world collapsed. He fought for the lives of the hostages and has a golden share in bringing them back,” he continued.

“The mark of shame will be carried forever on the foreheads of the cabinet members, they are the members of Israel’s supreme command on October 7 at 06:29: Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel Katz, Yariv Levin, Miri Regev, Gila Gamliel, Eli Cohen, and Avi Dichter,” he said, naming members of the cabinet on the eve of the Oct. 7 attacks.