Israel’s Netanyahu faces election challenge from hawkish ex-general
by Alexander Cornwell
TEL AVIV, June 26 (Reuters) – Gadi Eisenkot, Israel’s former military chief who lost his son in Gaza and boasts of his “Dahiyeh doctrine” of crushing enemies with disproportionate force, is rising in the polls and could unseat Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister in upcoming elections.
Eisenkot, 66, has projected the image of a political outsider, soldier and “security hawk” whose humble background and family sacrifices contrast vividly with Netanyahu’s decades in high office and ongoing corruption cases.
As Israelis prepare to vote for the first time since the trauma of Oct. 7, 2023, the Hamas attack and Israel’s devastating but inconclusive wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, polls show many voters oppose the incumbents.
Israeli polls show that Eisenkot’s new Yashar political party will come second to Netanyahu’s Likud in the number of seats in parliament.
But Yashar, which means straight or honest in Hebrew, may be in a better position than Likud to form a governing coalition by working with a broader range of parties across Israel’s political spectrum.
No date has been set for the election, which is scheduled for late October, and the results are difficult to predict in Israel’s parliamentary system. Another party led by former prime minister Naftali Bennett is also included in the framework.
SAHIN APPROACH TO SECURITY
Eisenkot’s victory may not lead to a major softening of hawkish Israeli regional policy, which has angered Western critics of Netanyahu and contributed to his decline in popularity in the United States, Israel’s main ally.
Briefly a member of the war cabinet overseeing the Gaza war, he attacked Netanyahu for easily acquiescing to US demands for a ceasefire in Lebanon to resolve the Iran conflict. He says demands for a Palestinian state are “irrelevant”.
As a commander in the 2006 war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, Eisenkot pioneered a deterrent strategy of responding to attacks by militant groups by causing extensive damage, even to civilian infrastructure in the areas they occupied.
The approach was implemented with heavy bombardment of Dahiyeh, the southern suburbs of Beirut, a Hezbollah stronghold. At a conference this week, he said he was practicing the “Dahiyeh doctrine” of what he called “disproportionate attacks”.
He added that the military should be free to attack Hezbollah anywhere in Lebanon and that the ceasefire demanded by US President Donald Trump creates a “crazy reality” that binds Israeli forces.
This uncompromising stance on the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, along with criticism of Netanyahu’s overall strategy and his handling of Trump, is popular in Israel despite the cost it imposes on the country’s standing with critical Western allies.
Humble background and family sacrifice resonate with voters
The son of Moroccan immigrants, Eisenkot is gaining ground among voters of Middle Eastern and North African Jewry, or Mizrahi descent, a sometimes disadvantaged group in Israeli society that forms a core voter base for Netanyahu.
Rising through the ranks of the Israel Defense Forces, where most citizens are required to serve, he was one of the leading commanders in the 2006 Hezbollah war, rising to chief of staff from 2015 to 2019.
That family background and long military experience gave Eisenkot the kind of security credentials respected by Israelis even before his 25-year-old son, Gal Meir, was killed while serving in Gaza in December 2023. Two of his nephews were also killed in the war.
These losses resonated with Israelis after nearly three years of conflict in which hundreds of soldiers were killed.
“He looks like a real person,” said Eitan Shamir, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. “He’s a very likeable person, not a politician, but an ordinary person, someone who could be your neighbor or co-worker. He’s not very knowledgeable. People feel like they can relate to him.”
Netanyahu’s side has used these qualifications to question whether Eisenkot has the fluent English skills needed to maintain critical ties with the country’s Western allies.
In a political environment that has moved increasingly to the right in recent years, he is seen as a centrist who is open to entering into coalitions with left-wing parties and favors drafting both Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews into the military with only limited exemptions.
He entered politics just four years ago, winning a parliamentary seat as an independent in 2022 and joining Netanyahu’s war cabinet for eight months before leaving after the October 7 attack, criticizing his leadership.
His new party is entering the election race with great momentum after rising in the polls in recent weeks.
But Tamar Hermann, an Israeli political scientist and senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, said Netanyahu could still make a comeback.
“Netanyahu is somewhat like a political Houdini; he somehow manages to come out of incomprehensible corners,” Hermann said.
(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell, additional reporting by Lina Obeid and Benjamin Raab, Editing by Angus McDowall and Andrew Heavens)
