Gadi Eisenkot (former IDF chief of staff; war-cabinet observer; National Unity MK) — Israeli-TV interview, Jan 2024 (per CNN): prioritizing the hostages over "total victory" — "for me, the mission is to save civilians (hostages) before eliminating the enemy" — and candidly admitting "a strategic achievement was not reached… we did not demolish the Hamas organization."

There's no dilemma: for me, the mission is to save civilians (hostages) before eliminating the enemy.

A strategic achievement was not reached … We did not demolish the Hamas organization.

[Source is English (CNN, reporting his January 2024 Israeli-TV interview; CNN's English rendering of his Hebrew remarks); tier-2, confirmed verbatim against the fetched page. The "(hostages)" in the first quote and the "…" in the second are CNN's editorial clarification/elision. NOTE: a separate "Netanyahu… in order for him to stay in power, the war has to continue" quote on the same page belongs to an academic analyst (Hazan), NOT to Eisenkot, and is excluded.] Declared positions of Gadi Eisenkot — a former Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (2015–2019), a National Unity / centrist Knesset member, and an observer-member of Israel's emergency WAR CABINET during the Gaza war (until his resignation in June 2024); his son and nephew were both killed fighting in Gaza. As the security establishment's most authoritative centrist voice, he broke publicly with Prime Minister Netanyahu over the war's conduct. He prioritized the HOSTAGES over "total victory" — "for me, the mission is to save civilians (hostages) before eliminating the enemy" — and candidly admitted the war had not achieved its aims: "A strategic achievement was not reached … We did not demolish the Hamas organization," calling the promise of total victory over Hamas unrealistic. He further charged that the war cabinet was "prevented… from making determining decisions" because "outside considerations and politics infiltrated into the discussions," and demanded a reckoning with the leadership "responsible for such an absolute failure" (Oct 7). This is the ISRAELI SECURITY-ESTABLISHMENT / CENTRIST-PRAGMATIST pole — a former IDF chief who judges the war on professional-strategic and hostages-first grounds and accuses Netanyahu of subordinating it to political survival — distinct from the peace-camp (Ehud Olmert), the Arab-Israeli left (Ahmad Tibi), and the Netanyahu-led right (Simcha Rothman). [Axes: security / war-conduct (hostages-first vs "total victory"; professional-strategic critique; the limits of military force against Hamas), government-stance (critic of Netanyahu's war management; politics "infiltrating" the cabinet; accountability for Oct 7), democracy (a reckoning with failed leadership), centrism (pragmatic security-establishment, neither ideological-left nor far-right).]