Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, who led the IDF’s Hostages and Missing Persons Directorate during the war, sharply criticized the government’s handling of the hostage negotiations on Wednesday, accusing the political leadership of rejecting earlier, broader deals in the name of what he called the “falsehood” of total victory.
Speaking at the IPS conference at Reichman University, Alon said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and government ministers repeatedly chose partial hostage deals when broader agreements were available, in order to allow the fighting in Gaza to continue.
“The choice was a partial agreement to allow the fighting to continue again and again, and the American administration forced us to end the war,” Alon said. He added that Israel fought “a long war that could have been ended at least a year earlier.”
Alon said that about 40 hostages who were kidnapped alive were killed in captivity, adding that under different decision-making or different negotiations, some of them may have been returned alive. He also said Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who opposed some of the agreements at different stages, “cannot take credit for bringing back all the hostages.”
The Likud responded with a harsh attack, accusing Alon of seeking “to surrender to Hamas’s terms, leave Gaza, stop the war,” while allegedly leaking from highly classified discussions and harming the negotiations.
“It is good that Prime Minister Netanyahu did not listen to him,” Likud said, arguing that otherwise Israel would not have completed the conquest of Rafah, control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the eliminations of Nasrallah, Haniyeh and Deif, the beeper operation, the establishment of security zones, control over most of the Gaza Strip, and the return of all the hostages.
Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli also attacked Alon, calling him “a politician and Kaplanist who worked against the political leadership.”
(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)
