---
title: "Retired Israeli General Says Captive Deal Could Have Come a Year Earlier"
description: "Nitzan Alon, once the army’s point man on hostage talks, said ‘the war was too long,’ a remark that landed amid new violence in Gaza and the West Bank"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-10-03T12:18:24Z
modified: 2026-10-03T12:43:21Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/israeli-ex-negotiator-says-gaza-captives-could-have-been-fre-829014
language: en
tags: ["israel", "gaza", "war", "palestine", "hostages", "mideast"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Retired Israeli General Says Captive Deal Could Have Come a Year Earlier

*Nitzan Alon, once the army’s point man on hostage talks, said ‘the war was too long,’ a remark that landed amid new violence in Gaza and the West Bank*

By rews desk · October 3, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/israeli-ex-negotiator-says-gaza-captives-could-have-been-fre-829014

## In brief

- Retired Major Gen. Nitzan Alon said a Gaza hostage deal could have come about a year earlier than October 2025
- Alon was the Israeli military’s point person on hostage negotiations when the war began
- Settlers attacked olive pickers and burned trees in Abu Dis, Awarta and Beita, Al Jazeera reported
- Israeli forces detained and assaulted journalists in Jabal Qamass, south of Nablus, the network said
- An Israeli strike on a Gaza City apartment building killed at least five people, per al-Shifa Hospital staff

A retired Israeli general who was the army’s point person for hostage negotiations at the start of the Gaza war said on Friday that a deal to return all Israeli captives could have been reached roughly a year earlier than it was.

“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,” the general, Nitzan Alon, said in comments reported by Al Jazeera. “We missed it, actually. The war was too long.”

General Alon, who held the rank of major general, was the military’s lead figure on hostage issues when the war began. His remarks amounted to a judgment from inside Israel’s own security establishment that the fighting, which ended in October 2025, was prolonged beyond what its stated aims required, at the cost of captives who might otherwise have come home alive. He did not say where responsibility lay, and the remarks did not address any specific negotiating round.

The comments came as violence flared on two fronts on Saturday.

In the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers, under the army’s protection, attacked olive pickers, set fire to olive trees and detained dozens of people, according to Al Jazeera, whose correspondents reported from the scene. The assaults struck olive groves in the village of Abu Dis, the town of Awarta and the az-Zahra area of the town of Beita, among other places.

In the Jabal Qamass area of Beita, south of Nablus, Israeli forces detained and assaulted journalists covering the day’s events, the network reported. It did not identify the journalists or say how many there were.

The attacks landed in the middle of the West Bank’s olive harvest, the season when tens of thousands of Palestinians pick their groves and when settler violence has long tended to rise. Saturday’s reports described the incidents as pogroms.

In Gaza, where a ceasefire ended the war last October, an Israeli air attack on a residential apartment building in western Gaza City killed at least five people and severely wounded at least six others, according to medical staff at al-Shifa Hospital.

The strike hit the al-Asala building in the Remal neighborhood, one of the city’s most densely populated areas, early on Saturday and came with no prior warning, according to Al Jazeera’s correspondent Hani al-Shaer, who reported from Khan Younis. There was no immediate Israeli comment on the strike in the reports.

General Alon’s assertion that an earlier deal would not have harmed the war’s other strategic goals runs against two years of argument from Israeli leaders that only sustained military pressure could force the captives’ release. On Friday, one of the men who ran that pressure said the argument was wrong.

## Sources

- [Israel could have ended Gaza war and freed captives sooner, ex-negotiator says](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/2/israel-couldve-ended-gaza-war-freed-captives-sooner-israel-ex-negotiator) — aljazeera.com
- [Israeli settlers attack farmers in West Bank pogrom, soldiers hit reporters](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/3/israeli-settlers-attack-palestinian-olive-pickers-in-the-west-bank) — aljazeera.com
- [Israeli air attack on Gaza City apartment kills at least five](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/3/israeli-air-attack-on-gaza-city-apartment-kills-at-least-five) — aljazeera.com