Could the hostages have been released earlier?
A year after the hostage release agreement, the article examines the painful question of whether they could have been freed sooner. It reviews the failure in handling prisoners and missing persons before October 7, the parallel-track negotiations, and the three agreements reached. It presents the positions of security officials, the government secretary, and a former hostage, noting that most negotiation team members believe some hostages could have been released earlier, but this would have required a full withdrawal from Gaza.
A year after the hostage release agreement, the article deeply examines whether the hostages could have been freed earlier. It opens by recalling that 251 Israelis and foreigners were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and that four others (Oron Shaul, Hadar Goldin, Avera Mengistu, and Hisham al-Sayed) had been held in Gaza prior. The article notes that the state did not treat the issue of prisoners with due seriousness before the massacre, and that in the early days afterward, returning the hostages was not among the official war goals—a situation that changed only with the entry of Gantz and Eisenkot into the government. For two years, negotiations proceeded on parallel tracks, ultimately resulting in three agreements: in November 2023, January 2025, and October 2025. Most negotiation team members believe some hostages could have been released earlier, but this was conditional on a full IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the Philadelphi Corridor, with international guarantees not to return to war—a move that would have been seen as a victory for Hamas. Government Secretary Yossi Fuchs defended the Israeli position, while former hostage Maxim Herkin argued that it was unequivocally possible to do so earlier. One senior negotiator attributed the delay to ideological, political, and personal motives, noting that only the intervention of US President Trump created the public momentum that led to the agreement.