Meet Netanyahu's most dangerous rival.
Gadi Eisenkot is everything Benjamin Netanyahu is not.
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This is a guest essay by Nadav Eyal, a columnist for Yediot Aharonot (one of Israel’s largest newspapers).
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Israel’s elections are due this fall.
The exact date isn’t yet settled. It could come in September, but most likely toward the end of October.
Under Israeli law, the latest possible date is October 27th. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to push the vote off as long as he can, because right now, according to every reliable poll in the country, the bloc he leads is on track to lose.
Netanyahu has been trailing in these polls since March 2023 — more than three years now — even before October 7, 2023. There are surveys, run by the government-aligned TV station Channel 14 and his loyalists, that show him close to winning, but these remain outliers.
This isn’t close to be over. Netanyahu, a leader who has won more democratic elections than anyone alive today, has managed to narrow the gap between himself and his rivals, and he should certainly not be counted out. Yet the bloc of parties committed to replacing Netanyahu has consistently held well over 61 seats in the Knesset (Israeli parliament).
Until recently, the most likely and formidable challenger to rise against him was Naftali Bennett. Bennett served as prime minister during the short-lived “Change Government” in 2021 and 2022.
A Right-winger and a relatively young politician (he is 54), Bennett was seen as a dynamic alternative to Netanyahu. His Right-wing credentials run deeper than those of Netanyahu: He once headed the settlers’ lobby, he is himself an observant Jew and, like Netanyahu, he served in Sayeret Matkal (the most elite special reconnaissance and counter-terrorism unit in the Israel Defense Forces).
Bennett was often marketed as a better, more high-tech, next-generation version of Netanyahu. He founded and ran an Israeli tech company that had a successful exit years ago — the new Israeli dream.
This is the backdrop against which something substantial has happened over the past few weeks — and it has everything to do with Gadi Eisenkot, the 21st Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2015 to 2019. Eisenkot and his new party are rising rapidly in the polls, closing in on Bennett and his newly formed list, and Eisenkot himself is now seen as a more suitable choice for prime minister than Bennett, and even than Netanyahu, if only by very narrow margins.
It is still early, but even now, Eisenkot is the most well-liked politician in Israel according to the polls.
It isn’t hard to understand why. He isn’t seen as aggressive toward anyone but Netanyahu. The fact that he lost his 25-year-old son — Master Sergeant (reserve) Gal Meir Eisenkot, killed in action in Gaza in December 2023, and also two of his nephews — makes it unmistakably clear that this is a man, and a family, committed to Israel’s security in the deepest sense.
Even before that, the former chief of staff was seen as someone attached to Israel’s mainstream national ethos. It was Netanyahu himself who appointed him to the post of chief of staff, and who was, by every account, enthusiastic about him at the time, arguably more so than about any chief of staff he has named.
So, why is Eisenkot rising now?
For now, it’s mostly at Bennett’s expense. He has yet to show he can actually take substantial number of votes away from the Bibi bloc. Yet the trend is clear: Even if he climbs at a slower pace than he has over the past two months, he can absolutely overtake Bennett as the bloc’s front-running candidate for prime minister.
Bennett decided to join forces with the current leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid — a longtime friend of his, but a figure positioned well to the Center. The two assumed that by uniting their ticket they would seal the deal for Bennett as the bloc’s candidate for prime minister.
The opposite happened.
Their “Change Government” formed in June 2021, famously ousting Netanyahu. That alliance featured a historic rotation agreement where Bennett served as Prime Minister first, later handing the role to Lapid in July 2022 — but the coalition collapsed due to inner ideological friction and legislative defections, so the Knesset dissolved itself. Lapid served primarily as a caretaker Prime Minister for exactly 181 days, making him the shortest-serving non-interim prime minister in Israel’s history.
That move is now widely seen as a political mistake for Bennett. By aligning with Lapid, he is now perceived as more centrist himself, and his appeal as a Right-winger running for the country’s top job has been undermined — by his own hand. Bennett is already viewed by much of the Israeli Right as a traitor to the cause, simply for having formed a coalition — on the strength of a single-digit number of seats — with the camp that opposes Netanyahu.
He still holds significant appeal for Right-wing voters, and he still leads Eisenkot, if only by a very small margin. But joining forces with Lapid has eroded that lead considerably.
Voters in the anti-Netanyahu bloc ask only one question: Who can unseat the prime minister? That is the only thing uniting Avigdor Lieberman’s voters on the Right and Yair Golan’s voters on the Left — removing Netanyahu. When Bennett tied himself to Lapid, he drifted toward the Center and weakened his central claim: that he was the Right-winger, the only Right-winger, who could bring Netanyahu down.
Eisenkot is seen as the real deal. In a political universe full of Netanyahu wannabes — politicians who built their entire careers in the Netanyahu era — Eisenkot reads as a man of a different generation, far more connected to the traditional security narratives of Zionism.
Eisenkot is everything Netanyahu is not. Netanyahu grew up in an elite academic family in an upscale Jerusalem neighborhood, where his household rubbed shoulders with that of the famed Israeli writer Amos Oz. His father Benzion was a renowned scholar and one of the chief editors of the Hebrew Encyclopedia.
Eisenkot is the son of Moroccan immigrants who later divorced. The second of five children, he grew up on the “periphery” (the country’s geographically outlying and socioeconomically disadvantaged regions) in Eilat. He did not serve in Sayeret Matkal, the elite commando unit, but in Golani — a renowned infantry brigade long seen as the brigade of the people.
Netanyahu is extraordinarily eloquent, radiating an American political style that has impressed Israeli politicians for almost a generation, from Benny Gantz to Yair Lapid. Eisenkot doesn’t play that game at all. He’s a slightly heavyset, teddy-bear-like former chief of staff who has devoted his entire life to the IDF.
And while he worked closely and well with Netanyahu, he never looked to him as a model for his own public life. He doesn’t come across as someone putting on an act or straining for effect. And that is exactly what captivates the Center and Center-Left voters who were never enthusiastic about Bennett in the first place.
Much of it comes down to the electorate itself. The truth is that Israel’s Center-Left bloc is extraordinarily fickle in its devotion to its leaders. It offers no real loyalty — unlike Right-wing voters, who have stayed fiercely loyal to Netanyahu for decades.
Center-Left voters are forever shifting their allegiance from one figure to the next, and much of that churn stems from a single, anxious, perpetual question: Who can actually beat Netanyahu?
Lately, Bennett’s campaign has not managed to shine brightly enough, while Eisenkot has come across as far more aggressive toward Netanyahu. And Eisenkot can afford to be because, unlike Bennett, his claim to fame doesn’t rest on winning over Right-wing voters.
This has put Bennett in a difficult position. If he pivots to court the Center-Left voters with whom he has less natural affinity, he loses the Right-wingers he needs to win against the Prime Minister. If he pivots back to the Right, he may draw those voters in, but at the cost of the centrist majority that makes up most of the bloc.
Eisenkot is the one who benefits from precisely this bind.
What do Bennett’s people say?
They see Eisenkot as a fata morgana — yet another mirage of the Center-Left, and proof that the camp still refuses to absorb the lesson that only someone with genuine Right-wing credentials can become prime minister after the war and October 7th.
They see the former chief of staff as a tool Netanyahu will use to his own advantage, and argue that he is precisely the candidate Bibi wants to run against — one who can be cast as too Left-wing. (Eisenkot once admitted to voting for Shimon Peres in the 1981 election — a notable choice for a young man from the periphery, then the bedrock of Menachem Begin’s Likud party, the same party that Netanyahu heads today.)
I have known Eisenkot for years, since he served as military secretary to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Eisenkot is sophisticated, and enjoys a rare quality for a politician: He is constantly underestimated. He is a deep thinker on military strategy; at times it is hard to follow his train of thought once he gets going on military history.
What Netanyahu will undoubtedly do is two things: Present him as a leftist hiding behind a banner of securitism, and try to make a joke of him.
But for any of that to matter, first things first: Eisenkot must establish himself as the leader of the bloc — and that is far from certain. His rise has been rapid, and his people report real public enthusiasm; yet Bennett is a sophisticated, fast-learning politician, and he did not become prime minister without the ability to overcome obstacles.
The worst-case scenario for the bloc would be that the two of them carry on an endless rivalry, cannibalizing their own camp, while Netanyahu secures another victory, or even a non-victory: a stalemate in which the other side fails to form a coalition, and so does he, leaving Netanyahu in power until yet another election.
It is hard not to vote for a former chief of staff who lost both a son and a nephew in the fighting in Gaza.
You forgot Einat Wilf and the Oz party.