Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot leads in polls ahead of October election, challenging Netanyahu’s long tenure.
JERUSALEM: As Israel heads into a fiercely contested general election on October 27, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has emerged as the principal challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
His rise comes at a pivotal moment, with the election widely viewed as a referendum on the premier’s leadership after Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
A recent Channel 12 poll put Eisenkot’s new party, Yashar (Hebrew for “Straight” or “Upright”), ahead of Likud, projecting 23 seats to 22 in the 120-member Knesset. The same survey found that 43% of respondents considered Eisenkot, 66, the most suitable candidate for prime minister, compared with 34% for Netanyahu.
Eisenkot, who has dismissed calls for a future Palestinian state as irrelevant after the October 7 attacks and pioneered Israel’s strategy of disproportionate military responses in Lebanon, has built his campaign around a 10-point platform. At the top is a pledge to establish a state commission of inquiry into Hamas’s 2023 cross-border attack, which triggered the Gaza war and expanded into a broader regional conflict, and which led to accusations that Netanyahu’s government oversaw an intelligence failure. Tens of thousands of Israelis have demonstrated in support of such an inquiry, but Netanyahu’s coalition has instead proposed a commission whose members would be chosen by politicians.
Eisenkot also promises a “new long-term national security doctrine” to strengthen the military and reinforce borders, including a “universal national service law” extending compulsory service to ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab citizens. He has pledged to “protect judicial independence, the rule of law, minority rights and a free press.”
“Through these steps, we will ensure that Israel is a Jewish, democratic, powerful, advanced and secure state,” his campaign says.
His overall position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains less clearly defined. “The only signal that he sent was that Israel should be a state of law,” said Tal Elovits, a researcher at Israeli think tank Molad. “Therefore, illegal settlements and settlers’ violence will be dealt with.”
Relatively new to politics, Eisenkot has attracted widespread public sympathy after his son, Gal, and two nephews were killed fighting in Gaza. His call for universal military service has become a defining issue, putting him at the forefront of opposition to Netanyahu’s alliance with ultra-Orthodox parties.
Unlike Netanyahu, who comes from one of Israel’s elite families, Eisenkot is the son of Moroccan immigrants and grew up on the country’s geographic periphery. “In a political universe full of Netanyahu wannabes … Eisenkot reads as a man of a different generation, far more connected to the traditional security narratives of Zionism,” columnist Nadav Eyal wrote.
According to Elovits, many disillusioned right-wing voters see the previous coalition of opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett as a “betrayal”, making them unlikely to return to Bennett. “Many voters of the right wing who do not like what Netanyahu is doing … are looking for a home. And a reasonable house for them today is Gadi Eisenkot,” said Gayil Talshir, a political science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
For liberal centrist voters, Eisenkot increasingly represents the opposition candidate with the strongest chance of unseating Netanyahu. “Once Eisenkot began to rise above Bennett in the polls, the strategic voters of the liberal camp went with Eisenkot,” Talshir said.
