Following Israel’s tight election, the opposition leader and famed military strategist now faces a tactical quandary
TEL AVIV
As the head of Israel’s Northern Command in the late 2000s, Gen. Gadi Eisenkot was a principal architect of what has become the Israel Defense Forces’ most fearsome and brutal strategy — the Dahiya Doctrine, which calls for exerting overwhelming, disproportionate force on civilian areas where the enemy operates.
“We will wield disproportionate power against every village from which shots are fired on Israel and cause immense damage and destruction,” he told an Israeli newspaper in 2008, describing operations underway against Hezbollah in the Beirut suburbs and south Lebanon. “From our perspective, these are military bases.”
Years later, as the military chief of staff, however, Eisenkot built a reputation as an advocate for operational precision and restraint, and for adherence to the IDF’s code of ethics and judicial system.
Now, as the leader of the Israeli political opposition bloc and the man best positioned to dislodge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Eisenkot, 66, faces a tactical quandary on an entirely different scale.
To form a government, will he join forces with the Arab parties that won a record number of votes in Tuesday’s election, though this is seen as a taboo for much of the Israeli electorate?
In a way this could provide maximum pressure, delivering up to 67 seats in parliament where 61 is needed for a majority. Or would he seek more precision and partner with just one Arab party, Ra’am, which might be enough to build a minority government?
Will he cut a deal with ultra-Orthodox religious parties, even though he fiercely opposes their demands for blanket military exemptions? Or will he retreat from his demand that Netanyahu leave political life, and form a unity government that could infuriate Eisenkot’s own base?
Eisenkot has criticized Netanyahu and his charges of electoral fraud but otherwise said little since Tuesday’s vote, in which Netanyahu lost his majority but retained the largest bloc in parliament — 53 seats — compared with 48 for the opposition and 19 for the Arab parties.
“The public has chosen change,” Eisenkot declared after the initial results were released, and he called on Netanyahu to step aside. “A leader worthy of the name would accept the people’s verdict and announce today that he is leaving political life.”
“Millions of Israelis have had enough of the culture of lies, enough of the failure, enough of the division and the incitement,” he said. He added a direct warning to Netanyahu against using new military action as a basis for prolonging his now-caretaker government.
“Netanyahu,” he said, “do not dare use Israel’s security for your own political ends.”
Eisenkot started election day visiting communities hit hardest in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack, then stopped by the grave of his youngest son, Gal, who was killed at age 25 during a hostage rescue operation in Gaza, before going to vote in Herzliya, his hometown.
Eisenkot is a security hawk, the son of Moroccan immigrants and father of four surviving children. Two of his nephews also were killed in the war.
His party, Yashar, Hebrew for “straight” or “honest,” won 21 seats, according to the official election results, compared with 27 for Netanyahu’s Likud. Negotiations with the constellation of other parties that won seats could take weeks.
