“Israel deserves to open a new chapter. We will write it together,” Gadi Eisenkot told supporters on Tuesday at his first campaign meeting, held in the central Israeli town of Neve Yarak. AFP reported his remarks.
Eisenkot, a former Israeli army chief of staff, was officially launching his bid to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He took aim at the government that was in office on October 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel. “For the future of Israel, we must ensure that next October, the ‘October 7’ government ends its role in history,” he said.
He called for what he described as “an honest and dignified Zionist leadership, a political home for citizens who dream of a different Israel and wish to bequeath to their children and grandchildren a strong and secure country.” He said his side would replace “a leadership devoid of vision and strategy, which is leading the country toward a loss of direction.”
Polls and background
A Channel 12 poll released that week projected 22 of the 120 Knesset seats for Eisenkot’s Yashar party. Netanyahu’s Likud was projected at 24. Yashar, which means “right” or “straight” in Hebrew, was founded by Eisenkot in September 2023.
He is 66, the son of Moroccan Jewish migrants, and has public sympathy on his side. His son Gal died in combat in Gaza, as did two of his nephews. He first went into politics in 2022 alongside Benny Gantz, also a former army chief. Eisenkot sat in Netanyahu’s war cabinet from October 2023 until he resigned in June 2024, and he has said little about how to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Netanyahu on the Lebanon border
The day before the launch, Netanyahu visited the security zone in southern Lebanon with Defence Minister Israel Katz. The Prime Minister’s Office said he was briefed on operations and inspected new ammunition and weapons designed to counter the drone threat.
“What we have done is take the Iranian axis and start crushing it,” Netanyahu told troops. He said Hezbollah once had “150,000 missiles and rockets, the highest density of missiles and rockets on planet Earth,” and now has about 8% left: “It is still significant, but it is no longer what it was.” He added that Israel had eliminated “9,000 terrorists, hundreds of terrorists in recent weeks,” and would not leave southern Lebanon “until the threat is eliminated.”
His office also reported that days earlier the Israeli military destroyed a 200-metre underground tunnel network used by Hezbollah, in the village of Majdal Zoun under Operation Closing Verse. The tunnel was more than 25 metres deep and held hundreds of weapons and launch silos aimed at Israeli territory.
The campaign opens against a tense regional backdrop. According to Outlook India, more than one million Lebanese have been driven from their homes by a conflict that has run in parallel with the wider Iran war. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem declared a US-brokered security framework, signed by Lebanese and Israeli envoys on Friday, “null and void,” and Netanyahu has said Israel will stay in the zone.
