Nitzan Alon, IDF’s point man on hostage negotiations, to leave role after over two years

By Emanuel Fabian

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2 November 2025, 10:03 pm

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Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon attends a ceremony at the IDF Central Command headquarters in Jerusalem on July 8, 2024. (Oren Ben Hakoon/ Flash90/ File)

Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, who has served as the IDF’s point man on hostage negotiations since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught, is ending his reserve duty and role in the military after over two years.

The military says that IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir agreed to end Alon’s tenure at his request. He will officially end his reserve duty in the coming days, according to the IDF. Alon also led the IDF’s intelligence effort on captives and missing persons.

The development comes as Hamas no longer holds any living hostages, having released the last 20 surviving captives on October 13. The terror group is now in the fraught process of returning the bodies of deceased captives still held in the Strip.

Alon began his reserve duty on the morning of the October 7, 2023 attack — during which 251 people were abducted — and was appointed by former IDF chief of staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi to head the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters.

“Under his command, the headquarters operated to return the hostages, focusing on intelligence collection and research, assisting in negotiations, leading and executing special operations, and maintaining ongoing contact with the families of the hostages,” the IDF says in a statement.

Zamir thanked Alon for “taking on the important national mission of bringing the hostages home, for his unique contribution to the IDF during the war, for his dedication, and for his decisive contribution to the effort to safeguard the lives of the hostages, to secure their release, and to bring the fallen back for burial,” the military says.

The Hostages Headquarters will continue to operate despite Alon’s departure, the IDF says, adding that it will be headed by a colonel who has been serving as chief of the headquarters’ operational department since its inception.

The IDF says Zamir “regards the return of the hostages as a supreme mission and a moral duty, emphasizing that as long as there remain fallen hostages in the Gaza Strip, the mission is not over.”