A Channel 12 poll put Gadi Eisenkot’s new Yashar party at 23 seats, ahead of Likud on 22, in the 120-member Knesset. The same survey found 43 percent of respondents calling Eisenkot, 66, the most suitable prime minister, against 34 percent for Benjamin Netanyahu.
Eisenkot, who led the Israeli military as chief of staff between 2015 and 2019, is now the main challenger to Netanyahu as Israel heads into a hard-fought general election on October 27. Many Israelis see the vote as a referendum on the prime minister after Hamas’s attack of October 7, 2023.
The platform
He has built his campaign on a 10-point platform meant to restore security, unity and democratic institutions. First on the list is a state commission of inquiry into the attack, which led to accusations that Netanyahu’s government oversaw an intelligence failure. Tens of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated for such an inquiry. Netanyahu’s coalition has proposed a commission whose members politicians would pick.
Eisenkot also promises a “new long-term national security doctrine” to strengthen the military and the borders. Its central piece is a “universal national service law” that would extend compulsory service to ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab citizens, and he has attacked Netanyahu’s deal with coalition partners on legislation to exempt many Haredi men. “This is a government that chooses to weaken the army in the midst of a brutal war, while the finest sons and daughters of this nation are deployed across all fronts,” he wrote in a social media post. He has also pledged to “protect judicial independence, the rule of law, minority rights and a free press.”
On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict his position is vaguer. He has dismissed calls for a future Palestinian state as irrelevant after October 7. Tal Elovits, a researcher at the Israeli think tank Molad, said the only signal he has sent is “that Israel should be a state of law,” meaning illegal settlements and settler violence would be dealt with.
Record and background
As chief of staff, Eisenkot was among those credited with developing the “Dahiya Doctrine,” named for a Beirut suburb that is a Hezbollah stronghold. It rests on the premise that Hezbollah hides fighters and weapons among civilian homes and infrastructure, and it calls for a devastating Israeli response against enemy population centres when Israeli communities come under long-range attack.
He is new to politics and has drawn broad public sympathy since his son, Gal, and two nephews were killed fighting in Gaza. Unlike Netanyahu, who comes from one of Israel’s elite families, he is the son of Moroccan immigrants and grew up on the country’s geographic periphery. Columnist Nadav Eyal wrote that Eisenkot “reads as a man of a different generation, far more connected to the traditional security narratives of Zionism.”
Why voters are moving
Elovits thinks Eisenkot’s understated manner may be his best asset. “The middle class and upper middle class… look for someone that will look responsible, boring, and I think that Eisenkot has that appeal,” he said.
Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett remain in contention, but current polling suggests neither is as well placed to beat Netanyahu. They governed together from 2021 to 2022 in a coalition that included an Arab party, and Elovits says many disillusioned right-wing voters still regard that as a “betrayal.” Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said such voters “are looking for a home. And a reasonable house for them today is Gadi Eisenkot.” Once he rose above Bennett in the polls, she added, strategic voters in the liberal camp went with Eisenkot.
