General Gadi Eisenkot quietly interrupted his mourning period on Wednesday, December 13. For a few hours, the former Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli forces left the shiva, the week during which he grieved his son Gal, killed in Gaza on December 7, to attend a war cabinet meeting. The conclave of five ministers directed the ongoing operations in the enclave. "He's part of a very small group making crucial decisions in the war, but he was also the father of a soldier who followed their orders," noted Yizhar Shai, a friend of the general, former science minister and entrepreneur. Ten days earlier, Eisenkot had offered his condolences to his comrade, who also lost his son Yaron, a soldier killed on October 7 during Hamas' attack on the kibbutz Kerem Shalom.
"This generation has been caught up in the worst disaster since the establishment of the State," said Eisenkot on Thursday, at the end of a week of mourning and national tragedy for Israel. By Tuesday, the army had passed the 100 death toll in Gaza, which came on top of the 1,200 civilian and military casualties in October. At the same time, intense Israeli bombings have killed at least 18,000 Palestinians, 70% of them women and children, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run enclave, and 7,000 militants, according to the Israeli army.
Reserve Officer Gal Eisenkot was assigned at 25 in Unit 669, a rescue squad. He was killed when a bomb exploded at the entrance to a Hamas tunnel in Jabalia, a suburb of Gaza City that the army has been attacking since December. By an unfortunate coincidence, his 63-year-old father was visiting his division's field headquarters on that same day.
On November 22, Eisenkot had ratified as a government member a truce negotiated with Hamas to allow the release of over 100 Israeli hostages. This came at a price: For seven days, the Islamic militia group was able to reorganize its forces, notably in Jabalia. Tamir Hayman, a former head of military intelligence, publicly reported a comment from General Eisenkot, who had told him at the start of the conflict of his intention to "manage the war as though his son was at the front of the military campaign and his daughter was kidnapped in Gaza."
To secure this truce, Eisenkot had fought for days against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, indecisive as ever and under pressure from his far-right allies, who demanded that Hamas release all its hostages. "Without Eisenkot and Benny Gantz [his predecessor on the general staff and partner in the cabinet], we would probably have missed this chance. For Gadi, it had become a personal matter and he was happy with it," said Shai, the general's bereaved friend, whom Eisenkot had visited during the final days of the ceasefire.
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