A split has opened up within Israel’s political and military leadership over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence on a comprehensive deal to end the Gaza war, according to four officials with knowledge of the internal deliberations.
Several leading figures in the military, the Mossad spy agency and the government are calling instead for a return to the phased approach to resolving the conflict, beginning with a temporary truce.
Mr. Netanyahu and other senior ministers now favor a more elusive deal that aims to free all the remaining hostages at once and end the war on terms set by Israel — terms that Hamas has so far rejected. The phased approach would free about half the hostages initially in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners.
Those opposing Mr. Netanyahu’s stance include the military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir; David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency; Tzachi Hanegbi, Mr. Netanyahu’s national security adviser; and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue. The opponents have not commented publicly. The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the Israeli military declined to comment.
Hamas recently said it would agree to the latest proposal for a phased cease-fire deal put forward by Egypt and Qatar, two mediating countries. A temporary truce would postpone Israel’s planned advance into the heart of Gaza City, which the government portrays as one of Hamas’s last strongholds.
The opponents of Mr. Netanyahu’s position generally attend meetings of Israel’s security cabinet, a small group of political and security leaders. Security cabinet discussions are classified, but local news reports described a meeting on Sunday as stormy.
As preparations for the military’s advance on Gaza City move ahead, and with negotiations for a truce at an impasse, it is not clear what, if any, influence these opponents will have. General Zamir, who will play a major role in this next phase of the war, has also expressed reservations about the planned Gaza City campaign.
While Mr. Netanyahu has not publicly ruled out a phased deal, and may be holding out for better terms, some of his ministers have described the gradual approach as no longer relevant.
The phased deal would begin with a 60-day cease-fire and the start of negotiations for a long-term cessation of hostilities along with the release of the remaining hostages, living and deceased, in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners.
Even before Hamas announced its broad acceptance of the phased deal in mid-August, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to have switched gears to focus on reaching an “all-or-nothing” deal, with the support of the Trump administration.
For most of the past year, Mr. Netanyahu had insisted that negotiations for a Gaza cease-fire be focused solely on a phased deal on the grounds that a comprehensive deal on Israel’s terms would be too hard to achieve, and a temporary cease-fire gave Israel the option of going back to fighting.
About a month ago, Steve Witkoff, the Trump administration’s special envoy for peace missions, said in a meeting with families of the hostages that Mr. Trump wanted to see all the living hostages released at once. Israel believes that about 20 captives are still alive out of a total of 48 who remain in Gaza.
The spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed al-Ansari, told journalists at a briefing Tuesday that Israel had not yet responded to Hamas’s acceptance of a cease-fire in phases.
The debate over different approaches to a cease-fire is highly charged for families of the hostages and many other Israelis.
A partial deal would mean choosing which hostages get released first and who gets left behind. There would be no guarantee that negotiations for the next phase would succeed where they failed before, or that Hamas would ultimately be willing to relinquish all its hostages, which would leave the group without leverage.
Images released recently by the captors of weak and emaciated hostages have underlined the urgency of their situation, leading many Israelis to conclude it would be better to at least get 10 out alive sooner, rather than try to negotiate a more complicated comprehensive deal.
The government says the Gaza City aim of the proposed military operation is to root Hamas out of one of its last strongholds and achieve a decisive victory over the group that led the deadly attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which set off the war.
There is growing skepticism that Israel could now achieve militarily what it has not managed to accomplish in the 22 months of war.
The chief of staff, General Zamir, has also pushed back in recent weeks against the government’s insistence on extending full military control over Gaza City, according to Israeli security officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues.
He has shared concerns about the exhaustion and fitness of reservists, these officials said, amid warnings that expanding operations could endanger the hostages and kill more Palestinian civilians.
In the security cabinet meeting on Sunday, General Zamir again warned against the planned takeover of Gaza City on grounds that it could lead to the military becoming solely responsible for the administration of Gaza, according to a fifth official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the cabinet’s confidential deliberations.
Yet there are signs that plans for the offensive are moving ahead.
The military said on Tuesday that thousands of reservists who had been called up in preparation for the operation in Gaza City were reporting for duty as part of what it called a gradual force buildup.
Several thousand reservists already in active duty have had their orders of service prolonged for this operation, the military added.
Avichay Adraee, the military’s Arabic language spokesman, said “enhanced services” — including food, water and medical care — would be available in southern Gaza, where people were being urged to move from Gaza City in the north. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who remain in Gaza City are threatened with forced displacement.
The military has said it called up an additional 60,000 reservists in all and has announced plans to extend the service of 20,000 more. The vast majority are not expected to deploy to Gaza. Instead, officials have said, the reservists will remain in Israel and replace active-duty troops who will advance into the enclave.
The new orders have angered many reservists. About 15 men and women who identified themselves as Israeli reservists criticized the call up at a news conference on Tuesday and in a billboard campaign, faces of reservists were featured with the slogan, “When will we say ENOUGH?!”
“We didn’t enlist to sacrifice hostages,” and “We didn’t enlist to occupy Gaza,” other billboards read.
The military says it already controls at least 75 percent of Gaza.
As forces were preparing to launch the new offensive, an Israeli airstrike on a three-story apartment building in Gaza City on Tuesday killed 11 people and trapped another seven under the rubble, said Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense in Gaza, an emergency rescue service under the Hamas-run Interior Ministry.
It was not immediately known if the seven who were trapped, all believed to be children, including a year-old baby, were still alive.
They were among several dozens Gazans reported killed on Tuesday, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
Lara Jakes Gabby Sobelman Abu Bakr Bashir and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad contributed reporting.
Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
Adam Rasgon is a reporter for The Times in Jerusalem, covering Israeli and Palestinian affairs.
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