Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, accused him Monday of prioritizing his political survival over Israel’s security, sharpening his criticism of the leader ahead of the country’s elections.
Unveiling the candidates of the Yashar party for the Oct. 27 election, the former military commander said nothing about how he would handle the Palestinian question or the wars against Iran and Lebanon launched by Netanyahu, but accused him of ducking responsibility in the nearly three years since the Hamas attack.
A relative newcomer to politics, his party Yashar (Hebrew for “Upright”), founded a year ago, has surged in the polls in recent months, with many voters seeing him as a viable candidate to replace Netanyahu, due to his military background.
At Monday’s rally in a hall in the central Israeli city of Rosh Haayin, Eisenkot vowed to put an end to the divisions that have plagued the country since Oct. 7, 2023 over Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza, where dozens of Israeli hostages were held, and on other fronts.
“In the face of the great rift that opened on October 7, and in the face of the immense challenges before the State of Israel, I believe we need a leadership that knows how to rise to the magnitude of the hour, that knows how to unite and bring unity around what we share, and to fundamentally restore the principles of stateliness and Zionism,” Eisenkot said.
According to a poll by Israel’s public broadcaster Kan published Sunday, Yashar is expected to win 23 Knesset seats out of 120, slightly ahead of Netanyahu’s Likud on 20.
The anti-Netanyahu bloc is projected to win 51 seats, while Netanyahu’s Likud and its coalition partners are polling at 52 in total. That means that neither bloc would have the 61-seat majority needed to govern, unless it secures support from unaligned parties, including two Arab-majority lists that together account for 13 seats.
