Gadi Eisenkot | Netanyahu’s challenger

Anti-Netanyahu politics — this lies at the heart of Gadi Eisenkot’s campaign for the coming Israeli elections. According to several opinion polls, the strategy appears to be working.

With Israel set to go the polls on Tuesday (October 27, 2026), Mr. Eisenkot’s year-old centrist party, Yashar (Hebrew for Straight), is projected to win 20 of 120 seats in parliament, putting it ahead of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud.

While Yashar’s emergence as a frontrunner is a recent phenomenon, Mr. Eisenkot, the man helming this change, is far from new. For much of the world and Israelis, he is known for articulating the ‘Dahiya doctrine’ — a military tactic which received international condemnation for advocating the use of disproportionate force in areas where militants are operating from — and as a critic of Mr. Netanyahu’s strategy just months after the October 7 Hamas attack in 2023.

During the campaign, he has posed himself not merely as a politician promising to end forever wars but as someone who resonates with Israelis fatigued by a prolonging conflict.

Mr. Eisenkot was born to Moroccan immigrants in Tiberias and spent most of his childhood in Eilat. With a working class background, he has portrayed himself as an everyday person to voters. If Mr. Eisenkot manages to win a parliamentary majority, he would be the first Mizrahi – Jews of West Asian or North African descent – to become the country’s Prime Minister.

Military career

His enlistment in the Golani Brigade, one of Israel Defense Forces’ premier infantry units, when he was 18, marked the beginning of his 41-year military career. After rising through the ranks of the brigade, he served as the Chief of Staff from 2015 to 2019.

The 66-year-old entered politics relatively late, joining Benny Gantz’s National Unity party in August 2022. Less than a week after the October 7 attack, he joined Mr. Netanyahu’s war cabinet. He quit eight months later, in June 2024, accusing the Prime Minister of lacking a clear strategy.

In September 2025, he founded Yashar with just six members. Since then, the party has garnered significant traction and presents itself as an alternative to long-established parties such as Likud.

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But Mr. Eisenkot’s campaign is not solely political. Having lost his 25-year-old son and two of his nephews to Israel’s war in Gaza, he carries the appeal of a common person in Israel who personally suffered the consequences of the wars the government is entangled in.

However, much of what the former army commander envisions comes with ousting Mr. Netanyahu. In an interview with The Times of Israel earlier this month, he said: “My goal is to defeat him [Netanyahu] outright in the election and bring about Netanyahu’s retirement from political life. I think that is where the healing of the State of Israel will begin. I do not hate him, and I am not seeking personal revenge. I just think he failed.”

He has accused Mr. Netanyahu of waging forever wars, weakening international support, endangering democracy, and not accepting any responsibility for the security failures that led to the October 7 Hamas attack.

In contrast, he has promised a clear strategy for military operations and a commission of inquiry into the October 7 security failure. On Palestine and how to deal with Hamas, however, there is little difference between Mr. Eisenkot and his political rival. He has vowed to end Hamas’s rule in Gaza within 18 months of taking office, either by implementing U.S. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan “from a position of strength” or through “creative operations” aimed at destroying Hamas’s military wing.

He has promised to root out “Jewish terrorists” in the West Bank and halt efforts to annex the Palestinian territory. But he is opposed to the two-state solution much like Mr. Netanyahu.

The electoral arithmetic remains one of his biggest obstacles, with neither bloc projected to secure a clear majority. He has shown little inclination to include Arab parties in a future coalition, preferring to work with more Zionist parties. Even if Yashar emerges as the largest party, Mr. Eisenkot would still struggle to secure the support of a majority of Knesset members to unseat Israel’s longest-serving Prime Minister.