On Tuesday, Israelis will head to the polls for an election that the international press has described as Israel’s most consequential in decades — if not ever. The outcome will determine whether Israel continues its march to the ultraright, in which extremist political parties increasingly serve as kingmakers, or whether it reorients to the more balanced position that many Israelis in the dwindling political left and center believe is key to rebuilding the country’s international partnerships.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving premier, has his back against the wall. The Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks perpetrated by Hamas, which killed around 1,200 people, occurred on Netanyahu’s watch.
Yet the prime minister has dodged all accountability for the massive security lapses, refused to support an independent commission of inquiry on that dark day and has catapulted Israel into a series of wars in the Middle East that have eroded its global image and at times caused tension with the United States, its most important backer. Israeli troops are now deployed in Syria, Lebanon and, of course, Gaza, where the 3-year-old war with Hamas that was supposed to end with a ceasefire has instead become a perpetual Israeli occupation with no end in sight.
Netanyahu is feeling the heat, pleading with President Donald Trump for more support on the eve of the election. Trump obliged over the weekend, writing directly to Israelis that “when you go to the Polls please remember that Bibi has been an outstanding warrior prime minister!”
Netanyahu’s main opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, would beg to differ. Eisenkot, a career military man, served as Israel’s top general in the West Bank during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, and later became Israel’s most senior officer during one of Netanyahu’s terms. Even before he plunged into politics, the former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff lambasted Netanyahu for poor wartime leadership bordering on incompetence.
This isn’t the opinion of some grifter; Eisenkot has firsthand experience with how Netanyahu makes decisions. Immediately after Oct. 7, Netanyahu asked his former military chief to join a wartime Cabinet for the sake of national unity. Eisenkot obliged, only to resign less than a year later after getting frustrated with Netanyahu’s unwillingness to elevate a hostage deal over total military victory in Gaza.
“My idea was to do the hostage deal, and after that, defeat Hamas,” Eisenkot commented to a Time magazine reporter recently. Instead, Netanyahu prioritized his political survival above all else — at least according to the prime minister’s detractors. Although all of the surviving hostages were eventually released courtesy of the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan, a hostage deal could have been signed off on much earlier, saving Israeli troops — and Israel itself — a lot of trouble.
The state of Israel is at a monumental crossroads. Netanyahu’s political power relies on several far-right parties that want to ditch all peace talks with the Palestinians and formally annex the West Bank and Gaza. Despite Trump’s Gaza peace plan, peace in Gaza remains elusive. To date, Hamas has refused to disarm as Trump’s deal demands guarantees that Israeli troops will pull out of Gaza forever. Netanyahu, in turn, wants Hamas to disarm first and only then will Israeli forces consider withdrawing.
As the standoff persists, the Israelis continue to expand their positions farther east, purportedly to pressure Hamas into accepting Israel’s terms and sending a message to everyone else that the Palestinian enclave will remain under Israel’s security control until it’s satisfied otherwise.
Netanyahu and Eisenkot, former colleagues, are now intense political adversaries. But they may be more alike than many people think. While Eisenkot has blamed Netanyahu’s government for the exponential rise in violent settler attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, calling them Jewish terrorism, his overall position in the West Bank sounds remarkably similar to Netanyahu’s own: Under no circumstances can there be an independent Palestinian state.
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Like Netanyahu, Eisenkot also supports building more Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The only difference between the two, it seems, is that settlement expansion has to be done more judiciously.
Regarding the two men’s positions on the war in Iran, it’s tough to decipher even the slightest difference. In cooperation with the Trump administration, Netanyahu has waged two wars against Iran in less than two years — the first, a 12-day bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June 2025, and the second, a weekslong air war targeting everything from the Iran’s political leadership to its missile-manufacturing facilities.
That second attempt, initiated in February, hasn’t ended and could even grow in intensity after the U.S. midterms. Eisenkot has praised both operations and Trump’s role in them and argued that preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is absolutely necessary for Israel’s security. (Whether Iran was even close to acquiring a nuclear weapon is another story.)
Trump has made it known that he prefers Netanyahu over Eisenkot. Part of this likely has to do with familiarity. After all, Netanyahu is the only Israeli prime minister Trump has worked with. Eisenkot is a known quantity in Israel but is a mystery to Trump, who like most leaders would rather continue with familiarity than have to form a personal relationship with a new leader.
Still, regardless of who is prime minister, Israel’s national security policy won’t really change. The deadlock in Gaza will persist, as will the one between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, even as a Netanyahu or Eisenkot administration presses the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah. And the Strait of Hormuz will remain bottled up until some kind of peace deal between Washington and Tehran is solidified.
Israel’s immediate future will look much like its present.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Tribune.
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