Gadi Eisenkot: Who is responsible for forming the Israeli government?

Israeli President Isaac Herzog announced on Saturday that Gadi Eisenkot, head of the opposition bloc that achieved an advantage in the legislative elections in October, was assigned to form a new government.

A statement from Herzog's office said: "The President informed the leader of the Yashar Party, Gadi Eisenkot, of his intention to assign him to form a new government," noting that an official ceremony will be held to this end at the President's residence in Jerusalem on Sunday afternoon.

Eisenkot, the former Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, is considered a relative newcomer to political life, as he did not officially enter it until 2022 when he became a member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) for the National Unity Party. He later left the party due to what he described as ideological differences.

Since his split from the most prominent opposition figures last year, to found his own centrist party, Yashar (meaning "the upright" or "the upright"), Eisenkot has become Netanyahu's main rival in the electoral race.

In recent years, the Prime Minister has faced accusations of corruption - which he denies - and has also been criticized for his handling of the attacks of October 7, 2023, in addition to the controversial amendments he intended to introduce to the judiciary, which led to widespread protests.

But Eisenkot's insistence on running against him was also driven by a personal tragedy.

His son, Staff Sergeant Gal Eisenkot, the youngest of his five children, was killed in an explosion in the northern Gaza Strip in December 2023, during a mission to recover the remains of two Israeli hostages taken by Hamas militants during the October 7 attacks.

Gadi Eisenkot says he has yet to look at his son's belongings, which were delivered to him in two boxes he keeps at his home in Herzliya, an affluent coastal city just north of Tel Aviv.

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"I haven't opened them yet. I keep putting it off," the 66-year-old told Israel's Kan Reshet Bet public radio in April.

His political ambitions were reinforced by the killing of Gal, along with the loss of two of his nephews in the military campaign in Gaza, and his conviction that the Netanyahu government had failed to prevent unprecedented Hamas attacks.

“I cannot turn back the clock,” he told The Times of Israel earlier this month. “I will do everything in my power to be worthy of the heavy price that Gal paid.”

Holding Netanyahu and his government accountable is one of his priorities. After the October 7 attacks, Eisenkot joined the war council formed by the prime minister along with other opposition figures, in a move aimed at demonstrating national unity. But he resigned in June 2024, accusing Netanyahu of not moving more quickly to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas during the attack.

He told The Times of Israel, “Women and children were kidnapped during his watch, and he deliberately did not do what was necessary to get them out,” a claim that Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected.

On the other hand, Netanyahu says that Eisenkot opposed necessary military movements in Gaza during his membership in the war council, and that his approach would not have led to the weakening of Hamas.

“I remember what Gadi Eisenkot said, and what others said, when we were still in Gaza... They said that we should simply make a deal, take out the hostages, leave Gaza, leave the Strip completely,” Netanyahu said at a press conference in June, according to the Times of Israel.

He added that following this strategy would have meant that "all the Hamas members" and its senior officials who were assassinated by Israel during the war "would have remained there, alive, and still in control of the situation."

In a recent interview with Ynet, Eisenkot rejected Netanyahu's claim and called on the prime minister to make the minutes of the war council's discussions and votes public. Days before the elections, Eisenkot pledged to end Hamas’ rule within 18 months if he was elected.

Eisenkot's priorities

Nadav Eyal, one of Israel's most prominent journalists and an academic who has followed his political career, says Eisenkot's personal loss filled him with "a sense of purpose and mission."

Eyal adds that this message is not limited to ensuring that Yashar's party obtains a sufficient number of Knesset seats to allow it to form a coalition that ousts the current prime minister.

Like Netanyahu, Eisenkot is convinced that Hamas must be excluded from any future plans related to Gaza.

Eyal told the BBC: “It is very important to understand that his son was killed by Hamas, in a war launched by Hamas.”

The retired general also did not express support for the two-state solution. In late August, he said that those who still believe in the possibility of achieving it are “delusional,” according to what was reported by Israeli media. But he said he intends to "redefine" Israel's relations with the Palestinian Authority.

“The Palestinian Authority must be allowed to manage the affairs of 2.8 million Palestinians (in the occupied West Bank). I do not want to rule them,” he said in his interview with The Times of Israel in October.

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While Eisenkot supports the expansion of major settlement blocs, provided it is consistent with Israeli law and national interests, he has opposed controversial plans to increase the presence of Jewish settlers in some areas of the West Bank, specifically the plan to move forward with expanding a settlement in an area known as E1 in East Jerusalem.

His reservations appear to stem from negative reactions in the international community, but he recently pledged to “remove Jewish terrorists from Judea and Samaria” (the name Israel uses to refer to the occupied West Bank).

Among his election promises was to launch an investigation into the October 7 attacks, to look into possible shortcomings within the Israeli government.

Mainstream media outlets in the country have published allegations that Netanyahu received warnings from Emirati and Egyptian authorities about a possible attack from Gaza.

The Prime Minister denies these allegations, is suing the Israeli newspaper that published the initial allegation, and has consistently refused to conduct an official investigation led by the Israeli Supreme Court, arguing that the judiciary would be biased against him.

“These elections are a choice between bearing responsibility and evading it,” Eisenkot says.

In his ten-point programme, Eisenkot also pledged to launch an emergency program to address the number of highly skilled Israelis leaving the country and to encourage the arrival of new immigrants.

He also wants to end military service exemption rules applied to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities and Israeli Arabs.

“Another thing we will do is pass a comprehensive service law for all Israeli citizens: military, national or civil service, including national service for Arabs,” he told The Times of Israel.

Previous attempts to expand military service, including one by Netanyahu's government, have led to protests from Orthodox communities.

Humble origins

Eisenkot was born in Tiberias and grew up in Eilat, two cities far from Israel's two main centers of political influence, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. He is the son of low-income Moroccan immigrants who settled in Israel during the 1950s.

Jewish communities hailing from countries in the Middle East and North Africa are known as Mizrahi. No Mizrahi has ever served as Prime Minister of Israel, although politicians from this community have tried to do so previously.

David Remnick, editor-in-chief of the New Yorker magazine, who spent time with Eisenkot during the election campaign, says that Eisenkot challenges Netanyahu's image as a champion of marginalized groups in Israeli society such as the Mizrahi, which seems at odds with the fact that Netanyahu comes from a Jewish immigrant family from Eastern Europe and grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Jerusalem.

Members of the Mizrahi community, who have historically supported the Likud Party, often use the Moroccan Arabic word “dayalina” (“one of us”) to describe Eisenkot, according to Israeli media reports.

“My parents immigrated from Morocco and I am proud of them and my origins, but I would be happy, first and foremost, to be proud of our Israeliness,” Eisenkot told the Channel 13 television network earlier this year.

Military life

Eisenkot joined the Israeli army at the age of eighteen, and spent forty years in military service, rising through the ranks until he reached the position of Chief of Staff, which he held between 2015 and 2019.

In the first decade of the millennium, he commanded Israeli forces in the West Bank during the second Palestinian intifada, which lasted about four years and during which about a thousand Israelis and more than three thousand Palestinians were killed over a period of more than four years.

Eisenkot later became associated with what is known as the “Dahiya Doctrine,” which calls for the excessive use of military force against civilian infrastructure in areas from which Israel believes attacks are being launched.

It is also important to note that Eisenkot, despite all his criticism of Netanyahu, never objected to the Israeli military response to the October 7 attacks.

About 1,200 people were killed in the Hamas-led attack, and 251 people were taken hostage.

In response, Israel launched a military attack on Gaza that killed more than 74,200 people, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, whose figures the United Nations considers reliable.

“We are forced to defend ourselves,” Eisenkot told The Times of Israel. “You have to look fairly at where this started.”

Journalist and broadcaster Mehdi Hassan wrote in the British newspaper The Guardian that “Eizenkot is not Netanyahu,” but he would allow “the same policies of expansion and destruction to continue in both the West Bank and Gaza.”

As for Anshel Feffer, The Economist magazine's correspondent in Israel and author of a biography of Netanyahu, he said that Eisenkot "is not a pacifist."

Speaking to the BBC, he added: "But he also has the image of a serious man. So far in the election campaign, he does not make crazy promises. He also does not come from an elite background, which makes tarnishing his reputation very difficult."

He points out that Eisenkot's emergence as a direct competitor to Netanyahu was somewhat surprising.

He says: "Until six months ago, the most likely competitor was former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But it seems that Eisenkot succeeded in touching on voters' interests at the right time."

Political bargaining game

In recent weeks, Netanyahu's campaign has argued that Eisenkot will need the support of Arab parties to form a government.

Prime Minister Eisenkot asked in an election propaganda clip: “Do you want a Jewish state or a Palestinian state?”

Eisenkot has publicly ruled out the participation of Arab parties in his government, but he has not completely closed the door on an anti-Netanyahu coalition within the Knesset as part of a potential minority government.

“Netanyahu retained power thanks to his ability to convince his supporters that voting for him was a matter of life or death,” Tel Aviv-based political analyst Dalia Scheindlin told the BBC.

But she adds that Eisenkot's background may make things more difficult for the prime minister this time.

“Military leaders have enjoyed popular support since the establishment of the (Israeli) state, because of the high level of trust that the Israeli people place in the army,” she says.

Healing the rift

Could Eisenkot's victory help mend relations between Israel and the international community? Professor Yossi Mekelberg, an Israeli expert in international relations at Chatham House, tells the BBC that this may be possible.

But he warns against hopes for “overnight change” and that replacing Netanyahu is no guarantee of a show of good faith on the part of Israel.

He adds: "I do not think that any of the opposition parties, including Eisenkot's party, is offering a clear alternative (to Netanyahu)."