August 4, 2025 | 02:10 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Former chief of Mossad Tamir Pardo, former head of Shin Bet Ami Ayalon, and former deputy IDF chief Matan Vilnai sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday, August 3, 2025. The letter contains a demand from them and more than 600 senior Israeli security officials urging Trump to force Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the ongoing war in Gaza, as reported by The Jerusalem Post.
These top officials, along with former senior police and foreign ministry officials, lead the Commanders for Israel's Security (CIS) group—which now consists of more than 600 former senior security officials—in urging Trump to intervene.
This is not the first time the group has urged the government to change its direction and focus more on the return of Israeli hostages and post-war plans for Gaza. However, this time they emphasized the desperate situation of Israel globally in terms of legitimacy, as well as Trump's recent public criticism of Israel for causing hunger in Gaza.
'Stop the Gaza War'
In the letter, CIS writes to Trump, “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.”
Furthermore, CIS states, “The IDF has long accomplished the two objectives that could be achieved by force: dismantling Hamas’ military formations and governance. The third, and most important, can only be achieved through a deal: bringing all hostages home.”
Additionally, they assert, “It is our professional judgment that Hamas no longer poses a strategic threat to Israel, and our experience tells us that Israel has all it takes to deal with its residual terror capabilities, remotely or otherwise. Chasing remaining senior Hamas operatives can be done later. Our hostages can’t wait.”
"End the war, return the hostages, stop the suffering," the group urges.
CIS has successfully influenced the policies of the Biden administration in the past, and in the more distant past, sometimes the policies of the Netanyahu government.
However, recently, both Trump and Netanyahu have shown an "anti-generals" trend whenever they have faced defense chiefs who disagree with their policies.
According to these defense officials, Israel must announce their acceptance to end the war in exchange for the return of all remaining hostages.
Additionally, CIS wants Israel to accept the international framework proposed by Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, along with the reformed Palestinian Authority (PA), to take over the management of Gaza post-war.
Therefore, CIS hopes Trump will pressure Netanyahu to put forward the offer, even though the prime minister has repeatedly rejected this position.
Netanyahu separately rejects giving the PA any foothold in Gaza. Given his current strong opposition to any trend supporting the possibility of a Palestinian state, even if run by the PA and not Hamas.
According to CIS, only after putting forward an offer to Hamas to end the war will Israel know for sure whether the Palestinian resistance group is willing to return all hostages or not.
CIS insists that such an offer is essential to be able to say that Israel has done all it can to bring back the hostages.
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