Netanyahu opponent leads polls ahead of Israeli elections
Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has overtaken prime minister as country sets October date for vote
Israel’s centrist former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has overtaken Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in several opinion polls as Israel announced that it has set a date for general elections in October.
Parliament is set to dissolve on Friday after formally selecting October 27 as election day, the latest date mandated by law — bringing a close to what was by many measures the most tumultuous four-year term for any government in Israeli history.
It came as Eisenkot’s newly founded party Yashar (“Straight”) has over the past week pipped Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party as the largest potential faction in the next parliament, or Knesset, in an unexpected bounce over the divisive long-serving premier.
The latest poll from public broadcaster Kan showed Yashar inching ahead of Likud by one seat — 24 to 23 — in Israel’s 120-seat parliament, echoing a similar survey by Channel 13 aired last week.
In the Kan poll, Eisenkot led Netanyahu by 41 per cent to 37 per cent among respondents when asked who would be better suited to serve as prime minister.
Yet analysts caution that Eisenkot’s path to form the next coalition government is not yet clear, with the combined slate of anti-Netanyahu Jewish opposition parties still running a few seats short of attaining a 61-seat majority in the Knesset.
Eisenkot has steadily gained support over the past few months, since a high-profile merger in late April between former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid.
Their combined new centrist party, called “Together”, has dropped to between 15 and 18 seats in recent polls. The rest of the opposition factions range across the political spectrum, from hardline nationalists to leftists who support peace with the Palestinians.
Several opposition leaders have ruled out joining forces with Arab-Israeli political parties, which, according to polls, are set to hold about 10 additional seats, complicating Eisenkot’s potential path to forming a government.
The current ruling coalition, made up of the Likud and several far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties, is badly trailing the opposition in the polls.
Analysts expect that Netanyahu, short of winning the election outright, would probably seek to deny his political adversaries a clear path to forming a coalition of their own.
In the Knesset’s remaining days, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition is attempting to pass a handful of controversial laws, including those aimed at shoring up exemptions from military conscription for his ultra-Orthodox allies.
Eisenkot has made supporting mandatory army service, which is compulsory for most Jewish Israelis at the age of 18, a main plank in his electoral campaign.
“On October 27, it will be the victory of those who serve, the Zionists, those who work, that sacrificed and continue to sacrifice for our country. Israel must win, and it will win!” Eisenkot wrote on social media platform X on Sunday.
Netanyahu’s coalition triggered months of nationwide street protests throughout most of 2023 after embarking on a controversial bid to overhaul the country’s judiciary.
Hamas’s October 7 attack from Gaza that same year was widely deemed the worst security failure in the nation’s history and the bloodiest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, triggering Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza.
Since then, the country has been fighting several wars across multiple fronts in the Middle East, including in Iran, Lebanon and Yemen.
Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s senior ministers and allies in the media portrayed the fact that the government is set to serve out its full term — the first time for any government in more than three decades — as an achievement in itself.
“Ultimately, contrary to everything people said, this Knesset is completing its full term. We passed nine budgets and hundreds of good laws for the citizens of the state of Israel,” said Likud lawmaker Ofir Katz, the coalition’s chair.
“Four years in Israel is like 40 years in the desert,” quipped Nadav Shtrauchler, a political strategist who has worked with Netanyahu in the past.
Eisenkot’s own personal sacrifices are well known to most Israelis. His son Gal was killed while fighting in Gaza in December 2023, in addition to two nephews who also died in combat against Hamas.
Eisenkot was at the time serving as a minister in Netanyahu’s wartime cabinet, which remains to date his only senior post in government.
He later fell out with the veteran premier over wartime strategy, including over what he saw as the prime minister’s attempts to undermine deals to halt the fighting in return for the release of Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Netanyahu and his allies in the rightwing media have attempted to paint Eisenkot as soft on Israel’s enemies.
What both Netanyahu’s allies and opponents agree on, for now, is that anything can happen in the 100 days until election day.
While opposition officials are in private cautiously optimistic about their chances, most analysts caution that Netanyahu should never be written off.
Netanyahu “knows how to overcome, so long as the candle is burning. Things could still happen [before election day],” Shtrauchler said. “I know a lot of people that bet against him. And they usually lose.”