Who is Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s main challenger in Israel’s elections?

By Tal Shalev, CNN

Tel Aviv (CNN) — One of Gadi Eisenkot’s strongest electoral assets is a simple, undeniable fact: He is not Benjamin Netanyahu. And for many voters in one of the most critical elections in Israel’s history, that may well be enough.

But one of his other assets became the center of a political firestorm when Yinon Magal, a prominent TV host widely considered a mouthpiece for Benjamin Netanyahu, blasted the prime minister’s main rival. In a series of race-baiting remarks, Magal called Eisenkot a “monkey” of “a Mizrahi-Moroccan” heritage managed by “Ashkenazi elites.”

The remarks struck at longstanding inequalities between Jews of European origin and Jews hailing from the Middle East, setting off a political and media firestorm. Magal later claimed he did not mean to mock Eisnekot’s ethnic origins; rather, he was using an underworld term for a frontman managed from behind the scenes. Even Netanyahu, not known for contrition, condemned the remarks.

Still, the episode put a spotlight on Eisenkot’s family history.

For years, many Mizrahi voters have traditionally supported Netanyahu’s Likud party. Eisenkot, 66, a son of Moroccan immigrants who became Israel’s top general, grew up in Tiberias and Eilat, outside the country’s centers of political power. His story contrasts sharply with Netanyahu’s elite Jerusalem upbringing in the circles of power.

Eisenkot rarely mentions his ethnicity, but analysts believe it is part of his appeal. Despite polling in single digits a year ago, he has emerged as the opposition’s leading candidate to unseat Netanyahu in the October 27 vote. Israel has never had a Mizrahi prime minister. If Eisenkot comes out on top, it will be a first.

So who is Gadi Eisenkot?

Eisenkot is the second of nine children and a father of five. He is a relative newcomer to politics after spending most of his life in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

He enlisted in the Golani Brigade in 1978 and rose over a 40-year career to become chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, serving under Netanyahu.

His tenure included one of the most contentious episodes in recent Israeli military history. In 2016, Sgt. Elor Azaria shot and killed a wounded Palestinian attacker in Hebron. Despite pressure from right-wing politicians – including Netanyahu – Eisenkot backed a military investigation and trial, saying he was defending the army’s discipline and ethics.

He entered politics in 2022 alongside another former chief of staff, Benny Gantz. After the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, the two joined Netanyahu’s emergency war cabinet. But they left in June 2024, pointing to the absence of a clear post-war strategy.

By then, the war had already exacted a heavy toll from Eisenkot’s family. His youngest son, Gal, 25, was killed fighting in Gaza in December 2023, two months into the war. Two of his nephews died in combat as well.

“Over Gal’s grave, I swore that the price he paid, he and his friends, those he knew and those he didn’t, would not be in vain,” Eisenkot wrote in the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in April 2026. He has called that singular promise central to his political mission.

What will it take for Eisenkot to win?

Eisenkot enters the final stretch as the opposition’s strongest candidate.

Most of the recent opinion polls project that his Yashar party will take 20 to 23 seats of the 120 up for grabs in the Knesset, more than Likud. He also leads Netanyahu in polling on who is most suitable to be prime minister.

But victory is far from assured, and the polling numbers – which can be inaccurate – matter less than Israel’s coalition arithmetic.

Under Israel’s system, even if Eisenkot’s party finishes first, the president does not automatically task him with forming the government. The mandate goes to the lawmaker most likely to assemble a coalition. And that’s where the math begins.

Opinion polls suggest neither Netanyahu’s bloc, which includes far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, nor the anti-Netanyahu bloc are on track to reach a 61-seat majority. Political deadlock is a very real possibility.

Eisenkot’s path to power runs through left, right and centrist parties, and could depend on the Arab parties in some scenarios. Netanyahu has spent years working to delegitimize any cooperation with the Arab parties, and some of other opposition leaders have already declared they will not work with them.

Eisenkot has said he will try to form a government even without 61 seats, raising the possibility of a minority government sustained by the Arab parties from outside. But right-wing parties that would need to be part of his coalition could reject that option.

How different is Eisenkot to Netanyahu?

A former military planner, Eisenkot is unlike Netanyahu in character, style and temperament. His campaign billboards cast him as “a warrior, a leader, a unifier.” His party is named “Yashar” – “straight” in Hebrew – inspired by former October 7 hostage Eli Sharabi’s phrase, “It’s not right, it’s not left, it’s straight.”

His central campaign promises are domestic and accountability. He pledges a state commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7, which Netanyahu has resisted since the war began. He also promises mandatory military conscription or national service for all citizens; the outgoing coalition depends on parties that demand continued blanket exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jews.

On security, however, he is a hawk who shares many of Netanyahu’s positions. Like nearly all of Netanyahu’s rivals, he broadly supported Israeli military operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Within the IDF, he is associated with the “Dahiyeh doctrine” – using overwhelming force against civilian infrastructure to deter future militant attacks – and the “campaign between wars,” a strategy of covert and low-intensity operations meant to erode enemy capabilities without triggering full-scale conflict.

On Iran, he shares Netanyahu’s central goals of preventing it acquiring a nuclear weapon and of weakening Tehran’s proxy network. But he has criticized the lack of strategy in the latest conflict and argues that military gains need to be accompanied by diplomacy.

He lambasted Netanyahu over his handling of the Gaza war, accusing the prime minister of prolonging the conflict and endangering the Israeli hostages for political reasons, a charge which eventually led him to leave the war cabinet.

What would his policies look like for Palestinians?

Eisenkot comes from the security establishment, and some of his coalition partners are likely to be right-wing parties, unwilling to accept radical change to Israel’s strategic direction. On Gaza, he has pledged to end Hamas rule within 18 months, either by implementing Trump’s ceasefire plan or through what he called “creative” military operations.

In practice, Netanyahu’s stated aims are broadly similar, but Eisenkot argues that “as long as Netanyahu is in office, Hamas stays in power.”

Before entering politics, Eisenkot warned that continued Israeli control over the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank risked creating a bi-national state, which he called “the end of the Zionist vision.” Since October 7, however, he has rejected the two-state solution, recently stating in an interview that anyone who still advocates for it is “delusional,” without presenting any alternative vision.

He does oppose formal annexation and illegal outposts and has called the Israeli government’s plan to build in the controversial E1 area of the West Bank a “mistake” because of the international cost. And he has vowed to crack down on settler violence and what he blatantly labeled “Jewish terrorism,” accusing the government of tying the hands of security forces.

How would he get on with Trump?

Trump has made his preference clear: on Sunday, he gave Netanyahu his “complete and total endorsement,” calling him a “great warrior prime minister.” Anyone else, he warned, would be the “wrong leader” – suggesting the US would then have to confront Iran by itself.

Eisenkot and other opposition leaders urged the White House, through intermediaries including Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson, to stay out of the race, according to Israeli sources familiar with the efforts. It did not work. Netanyahu and Trump share a long history, spanning through the 2017 US embassy move to Jerusalem, the 2018 exit from the Iran nuclear deal, the 2020 Abraham Accords and the 2025-2026 strikes on Iran.

When Trump was asked by political analyst Barak Ravid whether he could work with another prime minister, he replied: “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, who wants to take the chance?”

Yet over the past year, Netanyahu has taken steps that angered Trump and others in his administration, including strikes in Lebanon and Gaza that undercut his regional peace efforts.

A government led by Eisenkot, without Netanyahu’s far-right partners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, would probably be more moderate and give Trump more room to pursue regional diplomacy, including in the the path of Saudi normalization, a long-held ambition.

While Riyadh still demands a credible path to Palestinian statehood, a coalition that does not depend on the far right would likely find it easier to move in that direction.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.