Summary

Eisenkot's new party enters the pre-election phase with great momentum after rising in opinion polls over the past few weeks.

Former Israeli military chief Gadi Eisenkot is surging in opinion polls and may oust Benjamin Netanyahu from the premiership in the upcoming elections.

Eisenkot (66) lost a son in the Gaza Strip and boasts of what he calls the "Dahiya Doctrine," which calls for crushing enemies with disproportionate force.

Eisenkot portrays himself as an outsider politician, a military man, and a security hawk. His humble background and family sacrifices stand in stark contrast to Netanyahu's decades in high office and the corruption cases still hanging over him.

Polls show many voters turning away from the current candidates as Israelis prepare to vote for the first time since the shock of the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and the devastating wars Israel has since fought, unresolved, in Gaza, Lebanon, and against Iran.

Israeli polls indicate that Eisenkot's new political party, Yashar, is on track to become the second-largest party after Netanyahu's Likud in terms of Knesset seats, with both parties still far from securing a majority.

However, Yashar—a Hebrew term meaning uprightness or honesty—may be better positioned than Likud to form a governing coalition by working with a broader range of parties across the Israeli political spectrum.

An election date has not yet been set, but it must be held by late October. In Israel's parliamentary system, outcomes are difficult to predict. Also in the picture is another party led by former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Hardline Security Approach

An Eisenkot victory may not lead to any significant flexibility in Israel's hardline policy toward the region—a policy that has angered Western critics of Netanyahu and contributed to declining Israeli popularity in the United States, Israel's main ally.

Eisenkot, who briefly served as a member of the war cabinet overseeing the Gaza war, has criticized Netanyahu for easily yielding to U.S. demands for a ceasefire in Lebanon to settle the war with Iran. He describes calls for a Palestinian state as "out of context."

As a military commander during the 2006 war with Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, Eisenkot devised a deterrence strategy of responding to militant group attacks with overwhelming destruction that leaves no civilian infrastructure intact in areas used by those groups.

He applied this approach through intensive bombing of Beirut's southern suburb, a Hezbollah stronghold. At a conference this week, he said he implemented this "Dahiya Doctrine" with what he himself described as "disproportionate attacks." He added that the military must have the freedom to attack Hezbollah anywhere in Lebanon, and that the ceasefire demanded by U.S. President Donald Trump created a "mad reality" restricting Israeli troop movements.

This hardline stance on the Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran wars, along with his criticism of Netanyahu's overall strategy and handling of Trump, is popular in Israel despite the costs in terms of the stance of important Western allies toward Israel.

Humble Background and Family Sacrifice

Eisenkot, born to immigrants from Morocco, gains popularity among voters of Middle Eastern and North African Jewish descent, or so-called "Mizrahi Jews," a group sometimes marginalized in Israeli society and a key electoral base for Netanyahu.

Eisenkot rose through the ranks of the Israeli military, which mandates service for most citizens, and was a prominent commander in the 2006 war against Hezbollah, later becoming Chief of Staff from 2015 to 2019.

His family background and long military experience gave him security credentials that earned him respect among Israelis, even before his son Gal Meir (25) was killed while serving in Gaza in December 2023. Two of his nephews were also killed in that war.

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These losses resonate with Israelis after nearly three years of war in which hundreds of their soldiers have been killed.

Eitan Shamir, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said, "He appears honest. He is very likable, not a politician, but an ordinary person, could be your neighbor or colleague. He is not pretentious. People feel they see a reflection of themselves in him."

The Netanyahu camp has leveraged these traits to question whether Eisenkot has the English-language skills required to maintain the country's vital relationships with Western allies.

In a political environment that has shifted increasingly to the right over the past few decades, he is seen as a centrist open to entering a coalition with leftist parties, and supportive of drafting Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military with only limited exceptions.

Eisenkot entered politics only four years ago and won a Knesset seat in 2022 as an independent candidate. After the October 7, 2023 attack, he joined the war cabinet for eight months before resigning, criticizing Netanyahu's leadership. His new party enters the pre-election phase with great momentum after rising in opinion polls over the past few weeks.

But Tamar Hermann, an Israeli political scientist and senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said Netanyahu can still make a comeback. She added, "Netanyahu is, in a way, like Houdini in politics because he somehow manages to escape very difficult situations," referring to Harry Houdini, known for his extraordinary ability to escape from restraints.

More about: America, Israel, Elections, Gadi Eisenkot, Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud