Giora Eiland

Eiland was born in 1952 in Kfar Hess, a moshav in the Tel Mond area.[1] His mother, Zehava, was born in Israel and was described as the moshav’s first daughter.[1] His father, Reuven, immigrated alone from Hungary in 1940, aged 17; most of Reuven’s family subsequently perished in the Holocaust.[1]

Eiland recalled growing up in a farming household characteristic of the 1950s, with parents who worked hard and children who contributed to the family’s livelihood.[1] One childhood memory concerned his fear of darkness at the age of five or six: his father took him to a dark place at the edge of their property and had him stand quietly until he became accustomed to the sounds of the night.[1] His father then reassured him, “You see? There’s nothing to be afraid of.”[1] Looking back, Eiland added that there had nevertheless been grounds for fear because of fedayeen attacks at the time.[1]

Eiland enlisted in the IDF in 1970 and served in the Paratroopers Brigade, beginning a military career that lasted 33 years.[4] His commands included battalions, a reserve paratroop brigade, the Givati Brigade, and the IDF central officers academy.[3][4] He became Chief Infantry and Paratroops Officer in 1993 and was appointed head of the Operations Directorate in December 1999; he also headed the Planning Directorate.[4]

During the 1976 Entebbe operation, Eiland served as a paratroop company commander and led a force assigned to take control of the roof of the new terminal.[7] He later recounted that a soldier under his command, Sorin Hershko, became separated from the force as it changed direction, was seriously wounded, and was left paralyzed.[7] Eiland described the injury as resulting from his own failure to ensure that the last soldier remained with the group.[7]

His senior staff duties encompassed both military operations and strategic planning.[3] During the Syrian-Israeli negotiations under Prime Minister Ehud Barak, he headed the Operations Branch and helped design security arrangements Israel considered in connection with a possible withdrawal from the Golan Heights.[8] In his later autobiographical account, Eiland expressed serious doubts about whether Israel could reliably detect Syrian intentions, interpret intelligence correctly, and respond in time after a withdrawal.[8] He summarized his position in the statement, “Israel does not possess a plausible solution to its security needs without the Golan Heights.”[9]

As head of the Operations Branch in 2001, Eiland publicly explained the selection of F-16 aircraft for a particular operation against military targets.[10] He said attack helicopters had not been considered effective enough to penetrate or strike those targets.[10] In a presentation delivered in Jerusalem on May 13, 2003, he outlined an interpretation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict involving five connected dimensions: military activity, competing narratives, the legitimacy of tactics, the legitimacy of leadership, and each society’s capacity to sustain the conflict.[11]

Eiland headed the National Security Council from 2004 to 2006.[2] As national security advisor, he worked with the Prime Minister’s Office on security and foreign-affairs matters, including Israeli-Palestinian issues and Gaza disengagement, the Iranian nuclear threat, threats from Syria and Lebanon, terrorism, and relations with the United States and major European states.[3]

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tasked Eiland with organizing an interministerial and military team to develop the proposed unilateral evacuation of Israeli settlements from Gaza.[12] A 2004 account of the proposal described evacuation of at least 17 of Gaza’s 20 Israeli settlements, while implementation and relocation arrangements remained to be resolved.[12] In his April 22, 2004 Knesset speech, Sharon identified the council headed by Eiland as the body that had prepared the disengagement plan’s basic principles.[13] These included relocating communities in areas not expected to remain under Israeli control in a permanent agreement, including communities in Gaza and four in northern Samaria.[13]

Eiland later recalled that he entered the council role two months after Sharon had already announced the unilateral withdrawal.[14] Although he had reservations about significant portions of the plan, he helped formulate it and participated in discussions within the Israeli government and with the United States administration.[14] His work also included initiating the Selah administration to manage the evacuation.[14] The council’s planning extended to international coordination and arrangements for Palestinian security and humanitarian assistance.[15]

The economic dimensions of disengagement were also part of Eiland’s responsibilities.[16] In a 2004 meeting with World Bank representatives, he led an Israeli team that agreed to establish four joint working groups covering trade and crossings, the transfer of Israeli assets in Gaza, industrial zones, and transportation infrastructure in the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[16]

The relationship between political leadership and professional preparation became a central concern in Eiland’s subsequent analysis of government.[3] He argued that the National Security Council’s effectiveness depended substantially on how a prime minister chose to conduct government affairs.[3] In his assessment, prime ministers had often bypassed preparatory staff work because they believed they already knew what was required, did not want to share ideas with political rivals, or feared leaks.[3]

In a written statement from January 2005, subsequently reported in 2006, Eiland explained that the council could not advance strategic-planning staff work if the Prime Minister’s Office was unwilling to handle it.[17] He advocated an empowered prime-ministerial staff able to prepare options before crises and help ministers assess their consequences.[17] Recalling his own attendance at cabinet meetings, he described asking himself: “What is the subject? Who is involved? Why? What has to be decided?”[3]

Eiland’s institutional prescription was deliberately small: a trusted person selected by the prime minister would lead a staff of no more than 20 people.[3] Its four functions would be setting agendas for senior meetings, preparing issues and relevant information, presenting and moderating policy alternatives, and supervising implementation of decisions.[3] He argued that this arrangement could improve national-security decision-making without requiring broader changes to Israel’s political structures.[3]

He used Operation Cast Lead as an example of the costs of insufficient preparation.[3] In Eiland’s account, four days after the operation began, the government was still debating whether its objective was deterring Hamas, damaging its military and arms-smuggling capabilities, or bringing down its government.[3] He argued that these goals required substantially different military actions and should therefore have been debated beforehand: “What is not acceptable is starting it four days into the operation instead of long before its beginning.”[3]

Eiland also undertook high-level military inquiries after leaving active service.[5] At the request of Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, he led an investigation into the 2006 capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.[5] On June 7, 2010, Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi appointed him to lead an external military probe into the May 31 Gaza flotilla incident.[18] Its remit included operational conclusions, the unit selected for the mission, alternative tactics, military decision-making, and intelligence.[18]

The inquiry examined the interception of the Mavi Marmara, during which nine people were killed; a subsequent account also reported injuries to 20 activists and 10 Israeli soldiers.[19] Eiland’s approximately 150-page report criticized pre-operation decision-making and intelligence collection, including inadequate coordination between naval intelligence and IDF Military Intelligence and insufficient information about the flotilla and its participants.[19] It concluded that commanders should have recognized that the operation could not proceed as planned once resistance aboard the vessel exceeded expectations, while praising the Shayetet 13 commandos’ conduct after boarding began.[19]

Eiland defended the commandos’ right to self-defense, stating: “There was a mistake, but not on the soldiers’ part. The mistake lay in underestimating who the Turkish ship’s passengers were.”[18] He later appeared before the public Turkel Commission to explain his inquiry’s findings.[19] That commission examined legal aspects of the interception, including whether enforcing the maritime blockade complied with international law.[19] In discussing lessons from the episode, Eiland argued that preparation months in advance would have provided decision-makers with a wider range of responses.[20] He also said that policy along the Lebanese border between 2000 and 2006 had effectively been set tactically by the military rather than by the government.[20]

Eiland’s publications developed alternatives to the conventional two-state approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[2] In a 2008 study, he argued that the accumulated compromises required of Israelis and Palestinians, Hamas’s rise in Gaza, and the addition of short-range rockets to the security equation made the familiar formula unlikely to succeed.[2] He proposed a modified Jordanian option and a regional solution.[2] His 2009 analysis similarly argued that the maximum an Israeli government could politically offer fell short of the minimum a Palestinian leader could accept.[21] He pointed to diminished trust, doubts about implementation, and Hamas’s capacity to undermine a political process, and advocated conflict management or modifications to the conventional formula.[21]

One proposed regional arrangement involved three territorial transfers of 600 square kilometers each: Egyptian Sinai territory would expand Gaza, land in the West Bank would go to Israel, and land in the Negev would go to Egypt.[21] Eiland argued that the arrangement could provide Gaza with development space, a seaport, and an airport, address Israeli security needs, and offer Egypt economic and transit benefits.[21] A 2008 presentation also included a tunnel linking Egypt and Jordan beneath Israel’s southern tip and proposed Jordanian security control in the West Bank to address the risk of a Hamas takeover.[22] These were proposed arrangements rather than adopted agreements.[21][22]

Eiland was also among former senior Israeli officials who advocated negotiations with Hamas.[23] In views reported from a 2012 discussion, he considered Qatar’s visit and aid to Gaza acceptable and suggested greater integration between Gaza and Egypt rather than reunification of Gaza and the West Bank.[24] He warned that weakening Hamas might benefit more extreme Salafi and jihadist groups rather than Fatah.[24]

On Iran, Eiland argued in a conference address that Israel could not destroy the nuclear program “without the possibility of recovery”; the maximum military achievement, he maintained, would be disruption and suspension.[25] He said such an operation required strategic coordination with the United States and warned that failure could damage Israeli deterrence and make Israel appear the aggressor.[25] He also cautioned that Iran and other regional actors could respond.[25]

Defense budgeting was another subject on which he drew upon his experience heading the Planning Directorate, where he had been responsible for preparing the military budget.[26] In a 2013 interview, Eiland proposed defining a minimum security standard and estimated that it could be met with a budget of NIS 40 billion, excluding American military aid.[26] Decisions about capabilities beyond that minimum, he argued, should belong to the political leadership.[26]

After military and government service, Eiland worked in strategic consulting and the defense sector.[6] A 2010 profile identified him as president of defense-equipment company SDS, chairman of Alpha Technologies, a researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, and an adviser to Israel Aerospace Industries, Israel Military Industries, and Motorola.[6] He also became an external adviser to the Givot Olam oil-exploration partnership.[6]

In April 2024, Eiland criticized reliance on military pressure alone in Gaza and recommended that Israel be prepared to end the war and withdraw its troops in exchange for the return of all hostages.[27] He also advocated alternative arrangements for Gaza’s administration and aid distribution, an effort to reach a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah, and refraining from attacking Iran at that time.[27] In another interview about Gaza strategy, he criticized what he regarded as a lack of clarity in cabinet decisions.[28]

In a 2026 presentation of his security doctrine, Eiland argued for defensive depth and security arrangements along the Gaza and Lebanon borders and near the West Bank.[29] He distinguished between a perimeter beyond the border excluding enemy military forces and a security zone inside enemy territory.[29] In his assessment, the latter could push hostile forces back, improve early warning, and, in Lebanon, help secure commanding terrain.[29]

Eiland’s published work encompasses regional diplomacy and military manpower.[30][31] He also wrote autobiographical reflections and patient education.[7][5] His 2010 study, Regional Alternatives to the Two-State Solution, was published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.[30] The 33-page work addressed the Arab-Israeli conflict and relationships involving the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, and Egypt.[30]

He contributed the chapter “Fundamental Approach to IDF Manpower Buildup” to the 2015 Hebrew collection Military Service in Israel: Challenges and Ramifications, edited by Meir Elran and Gabi Sheffer and published by the Institute for National Security Studies.[31] His 2018 Hebrew autobiography, Lo Nirdam Baleylot, rendered as Sleepless at Night, recounted military experiences and events that shaped his outlook.[7] His discussion of the Entebbe operation included an explicit acknowledgment of responsibility for the circumstances in which Sorin Hershko was wounded.[7]

Eiland was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2016 and later described chronic pain following surgery and further treatment.[7] The experience prompted him to investigate how the disease was diagnosed and treated in Israel and to write a separate Hebrew book, published in 2019.[5] He described the book as the product of more than two years of research, intended to help patients ask their doctors informed questions.[5] Eiland said he had spoken with hundreds of patients and dozens of physicians while learning about the disease.[5]

Eiland’s regional political proposals encountered explicit opposition: Jordanian participants at a 2008 conference rejected his suggestion of Jordanian security control in the West Bank, and former foreign minister Marwan Muasher called it a “non-starter.”[22] His public criticism of violence against Palestinians also employed a charged historical analogy: in remarks concerning Hebron, he compared attacks on Palestinians to Kristallnacht and argued that the government applied a widening double standard to Palestinian attacks on Israeli Jews and Israeli attacks on Palestinians.[32]

In a 2022 first-person article, Eiland revisited the Muhammad al-Durrah incident, recalling that he initially accepted a French reporter’s account and publicly took responsibility for the boy’s death.[33] He claimed that a later military investigation pointed instead to Palestinian fire and raised the possibility of staging; these were his retrospective claims concerning a politically disputed incident.[33] In the same article, he described investigating a 2003 Jenin killing of a man he identified as a senior British intelligence official working for the United Nations, attributing the shooting to soldiers mistaking a satellite telephone for a gun.[33] He said he presented the findings in London and New York and met the victim’s sons, British officials, and the UN secretary-general.[33]

In November 2023, Eiland argued that epidemics in southern Gaza could hasten Hamas’s collapse and that pressure on the population could end upon Hamas’s surrender.[34] Fifteen public-health professionals, including current and former public-health school deans, denounced the argument as strategically, medically, and morally wrong.[34]

The September 2024 Generals’ Plan, crafted by Eiland and endorsed by other senior officers, proposed giving northern Gaza’s civilians—estimated at up to 300,000—a week to evacuate, followed by a blockade preventing humanitarian aid and movement until Hamas fighters surrendered.[35] Its claim to comply with international law, and its implications for civilians remaining in the area, were disputed.[35] Palestinians accused the military of implementing it, while the military denied doing so; Netanyahu also denied pursuing it in a conversation with Antony Blinken.[36] Eiland characterized actual operations as falling between an ordinary military attack and his proposal.[36]