Hundreds of retired Israeli military, intelligence, police and diplomatic officials appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump in early August 2025 to use his influence with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to help end the Gaza war and secure the return of the remaining Israeli hostages.
The appeal was organized by Commanders for Israel's Security, a group of former senior Israeli security officials. Reports at the time put the number of participants at more than 500 and, in some accounts, more than 600. Signatories included former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, former Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon and other former senior defense and government figures.
The group's central argument was an assessment rather than an independently established fact: its members said that Hamas no longer posed what they considered a strategic threat to Israel and that the remaining hostages could not be brought home through military pressure alone.
"It is our professional judgement that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel," the former officials wrote, according to contemporary reporting. They urged Trump to steer Netanyahu's government toward what they described as three priorities: ending the war, returning the hostages and stopping the suffering.
Appeal came as Israel debated expanding operations
The letter arrived at a critical moment in the conflict. Indirect ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas had stalled, while Netanyahu was considering a broader military campaign in Gaza. Israeli political and security leaders were publicly divided over whether further operations would improve the chances of defeating Hamas and recovering hostages or instead place the captives and Israeli troops at greater risk.
Netanyahu continued to say that Israel's objectives included dismantling Hamas's military and governing capabilities, recovering the hostages and ensuring that Gaza could no longer threaten Israel. The former officials challenging his approach argued that military force had already achieved what it reasonably could and that a negotiated agreement was necessary for the hostages' return.
Ayalon said in comments accompanying the initiative that he regarded the initial Israeli campaign after the October 7 attack as defensive, but believed the justification for continuing it had changed after Israel achieved what he considered its principal military objectives. That was his political and security assessment, not a consensus finding of Israel's government or military leadership.
The CIS letter told Trump: "Stop the Gaza War!" and pointed to his influence over Israeli decision-making. The organization had previously advocated prioritizing an agreement for the return of hostages.
Hostage videos intensified pressure
The appeal followed the release by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad of videos showing Israeli hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski in visibly emaciated condition. The images caused widespread distress in Israel and drew international condemnation.
Netanyahu contacted hostage families and said efforts to return the captives would continue. The International Committee of the Red Cross also called for access to the hostages and said their conditions shown in the videos highlighted the urgent need for humanitarian assistance and medical care.
Families of hostages and their supporters had for months pressed the Israeli government to prioritize an agreement that would secure their release, while Netanyahu's government maintained that military pressure was also necessary to achieve Israel's objectives.
Gaza's humanitarian crisis was worsening
The political dispute unfolded alongside a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. By early August 2025, the Gaza Health Ministry was reporting more than 60,000 Palestinian deaths since the war began. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its overall death toll, and individual incidents can be difficult to verify independently because international journalists have faced severe restrictions on independent access to Gaza. United Nations agencies and other international organizations nevertheless routinely used the ministry's cumulative figures while noting the limitations of wartime data.
The war began after the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 people were taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. Israel responded with an extensive military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
Food insecurity had become particularly severe by the summer of 2025. In a July 29 alert, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification said the "worst-case scenario of Famine" was unfolding in Gaza. The IPC stressed at that stage that its alert was not itself a formal famine classification, but said evidence showed widespread starvation, acute malnutrition and hunger-related deaths, with famine thresholds reached for food consumption in much of Gaza and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City.
The IPC linked the deterioration to intensified conflict, displacement, severely restricted humanitarian access and the collapse of essential services. Israel said it was allowing humanitarian assistance into Gaza and accused Hamas of diverting supplies and the United Nations of distribution failures; UN agencies and humanitarian organizations said the volume and accessibility of aid remained far below what was required.
Trump himself had acknowledged days before the former officials' letter that there was "real starvation" in Gaza and called for more food to reach civilians, publicly differing from Netanyahu's rejection of claims that Gaza was suffering from widespread starvation.
Later developments changed the immediate context
The August 2025 appeal did not immediately end the conflict. Fighting continued for more than two additional months. The humanitarian assessment also became more severe: on August 22, 2025, the IPC formally confirmed famine conditions in Gaza Governorate for the period it assessed, while warning that conditions elsewhere were also catastrophic.
A major diplomatic change came in October 2025. Israel and Hamas accepted the first phase of a U.S.-backed framework proposed by Trump and mediated with Egypt, Qatar and Türkiye. A ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025, sharply reducing large-scale hostilities and providing for hostage and prisoner releases.
According to a 2026 implementation report, the last living Israeli hostage was returned on October 13, 2025, and the remains of the final deceased hostage were returned in January 2026.
The ceasefire did not resolve the broader conflict. A United Nations report issued in September 2026 said the agreement had ended large-scale hostilities and secured the return of the remaining Israeli hostages and their remains, but that violence had continued. Israeli strikes and operations persisted, Hamas and other armed groups had not completed disarmament, access restrictions remained severe in much of Gaza, and key questions over governance, Israeli withdrawal and reconstruction were still unresolved.
The former officials' August 2025 appeal therefore became part of a broader domestic and international debate over whether continued military operations or a negotiated settlement offered the more effective route to recovering the hostages and ending the war. The later ceasefire achieved the hostage releases the group had called for, but the longer-term political, security and humanitarian issues they raised remained unsettled well into 2026.
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