Hundreds of Israeli ex-officials appeal to Trump to help finish Gaza warfare

A gaggle of some 600 retired Israeli security officers, including former heads of intelligence companies, have written to US President Donald Trump to strain Israel to immediately finish the warfare in Gaza.

“It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel,” the officers said.

“Your credibility with the vast majority of Israelis augments your ability to steer Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and his government in the right direction: End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering,” they wrote.

Their appeal comes amid reports that Netanyahu is pushing to develop navy operations in Gaza as oblique ceasefire talks with Hamas have stalled.

Israel launched a devastating warfare in Gaza following Hamas’s attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken into Gaza as hostages.

More than 60,000 people have been killed as a outcome of Israel’s navy marketing campaign in Gaza since then, the Hamas-run health ministry says.

On Monday, the ministry reported that at least 94 people had been killed in Gaza in the previous day, including dozens it said had died in Israeli strikes.

At least 24 people had been killed while looking for support, it added. Such reports have become virtually each day in latest months but are onerous to confirm as worldwide journalists, including the BBC, are blocked by Israel from getting into Gaza independently.

The territory is also experiencing mass deprivation as a outcome of heavy restrictions imposed by Israel on what is allowed into Gaza. The ministry says 180 people, including 93 youngsters, have died from malnutrition since the begin of the warfare.

UN-backed companies have said the “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out” in Gaza.

The newest intervention by the prime former Israeli officers came after videos of two emaciated Israeli hostages were launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

The videos were extensively condemned by Israeli and Western leaders.

After the videos were launched, Netanyahu spoke with the two hostage households, telling them that efforts to return all the hostages “will continue constantly and relentlessly”.

But an Israeli official – extensively quoted by native media – said Netanyahu was working to free the hostages through “the military defeat of Hamas”.

The risk of a new escalation in Gaza may further anger Israel’s allies which have been pushing for an speedy ceasefire as reports of Palestinians dying from hunger or malnutrition cause shock around the world.

The important group supporting hostages’ households condemned the concept of a new navy offensive saying: “Netanyahu is leading Israel and the hostages to doom.”

That view was pointedly made in the letter to Trump by former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, Ami Ayalon, former chief of Shin Bet – Israel’s home secret service company – former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and former Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon among others.

“At first this war was a just war, a defensive war, but when we achieved all military objectives, this war ceased to be a just war,” said Ayalon.

The former prime leaders head the Commanders for Israel’s Security (CIS) group, which has urged the authorities in the previous to focus on securing the return of the hostages.

“Stop the Gaza War! On behalf of CIS, Israel’s largest group of former IDF generals and Mossad, Shin Bet, Police, and Diplomatic Corps equivalents, we urge you to end the Gaza war. You did it in Lebanon. Time to do it in Gaza as well,” they wrote to the US president.

Israel has confronted growing worldwide isolation, as the widespread destruction in Gaza and the struggling of Palestinians spark outrage.

Polls around the world recommend that public opinion is more and more unfavourable about Israel, which is placing strain on Western leaders to act.

But it is not clear what strain, if any, Trump will select to exert on the Israeli prime minister.

The US president has persistently backed his ally, even though he publicly acknowledged last week that there was “real starvation” in Gaza after Netanyahu insisted there was no such factor.