In Israel vote, ex-army chief emerges main rival to Netanyahu

JERUSALEM – As Israel heads into a fiercely contested general election on Oct 27, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has emerged as the principal challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Eisenkot’s rise comes at a pivotal moment in Israeli politics, with the election widely viewed as a referendum on the long-serving premier’s leadership in the violent aftermath of Hamas’ Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

A recent Channel 12 poll put Eisenkot’s new party, Yashar (Hebrew for “Straight” or “Upright”), ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud, projecting 23 seats to Likud’s 22 in the 120-member Knesset.

The same survey found that 43 per cent of respondents considered Eisenkot, 66, the most suitable candidate for prime minister, compared with 34 per cent for Netanyahu.

Eisenkot – who has dismissed calls for a future Palestinian state as irrelevant after the Oct 7 attacks and pioneered Israel’s strategy of disproportionate military responses in Lebanon – has built his campaign around a 10-point platform that he says will restore Israel’s security, unity and democratic institutions.

Chief of staff of the Israeli military between 2015 and 2019, Eisenkot was among those credited with developing the “Dahiya Doctrine”, named after a Beirut suburb that is a Hezbollah stronghold.

Advanced on the premise that Hezbollah conceals fighters and weapons among civilian homes and infrastructure, the doctrine calls for a devastating Israeli response against enemy population centres when Israeli communities come under long-range attack.

At the top of his civilian manifesto is a pledge to establish a state commission of inquiry into Hamas’ bloody 2023 cross-border attack, which triggered the Gaza war and quickly expanded into a broader regional conflict, and which led to Netanyahu’s government being accused of overseeing an intelligence failure.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have repeatedly 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” aimed at strengthening the military and reinforcing Israel’s borders.

A central plank of this is a “universal national service law” that would extend compulsory service to ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab citizens.

He has also 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,” Eisenkot’s campaign says.

His overall position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, 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.

Eisenkot’s call for universal military service has become a defining issue of his campaign, putting him at the forefront of opposition to Netanyahu’s alliance with ultra-Orthodox parties.

Eisenkot has repeatedly attacked Netanyahu’s agreement with his coalition partners to advance legislation exempting many Haredi men from military service.

“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.

‘Different generation’

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 in a recent blog.

Eisenkot’s understated style could prove to be one of his strongest political assets, said Elovits.

“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.

Although opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Naftali Bennett remain in contention, current polling suggests neither is as well positioned as Eisenkot to defeat Netanyahu.

Lapid and Bennett governed together between 2021 and 2022 in a coalition that included an Arab party.

Strategic option

According to Elovits, many disillusioned right-wing voters still see that alliance 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. AFP