General Gadi Eisenkot discreetly paused his mourning on Wednesday, December 13th. He left the shiva for a few hours during the week he mourned his son Gal, who was killed in Gaza on December 7. The former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff attended a meeting of the War Cabinet, the group of five ministers that directs ongoing operations in the enclave.
Also read: Live, Israel-Hamas: Jewish state authorizes “temporary” import of aid into Gaza through one of its border crossings
“He is part of a very small group that makes crucial decisions in the war, but he was also the father of a soldier who received their orders,” notes a friend of the general, former science minister and entrepreneur Izhar Shai. Ten days earlier, Mr. Eisenkot had expressed his condolences to this fellow passenger, who had also lost a son, Yaron, a soldier killed in the Hamas-led attack on October 7 at Kibbutz Kerem Shalom.
“This generation has been in the worst catastrophe since the founding of the state,” General Eisenkot said on Thursday at the end of his week of mourning, which was experienced as a national tragedy in Israel. On Tuesday, the army passed the milestone of 100 deaths in Gaza, adding to the 1,200 civilian and military casualties in October. At the same time, intense Israeli bombings killed at least 18,000 Palestinians, 70% of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run enclave's health ministry, and 7,000 militants, according to the Israeli army.
“A personal matter”
Reserve officer Gal Eisenkot was drafted into Battalion 669, a rescue unit, at the age of 25. He was killed by a bomb explosion at the entrance to a Hamas tunnel in Jabaliya, a suburb of Gaza City that the army has captured since December. By an unfortunate coincidence, his 63-year-old father was visiting his division headquarters that day.
In government, Gadi Eisenkot approved a ceasefire negotiated with Hamas on November 22, allowing the release of more than a hundred Israeli hostages. This had its price: the Islamist militias were able to reorganize their forces for seven days, especially in Jabaliya. Tamir Hayman, a former military intelligence chief, publicly reported a trust from General Eisenkot, who had told him early in the conflict his intention to “fight the war as if his son were at the front and as if his daughter.” were hostages in Gaza.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers The Red Sea under pressure from the Yemeni Houthis
To achieve this ceasefire, Mr. Eisenkot had fought for days against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was as always indecisive and facing pressure from his far-right allies demanding the release of all Hamas hostages. “Without Eisenkot and Benny Gantz [son prédécesseur à l’état-major et partenaire au cabinet], we probably would have missed this opportunity. Gadi made it a personal matter and was happy with it,” said Izhar Shai, the general’s grieving friend whom Mr. Eisenkot visited in the final days of the ceasefire.
You still have 65% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.