Who Is Gadi Eisenkot? Israel’s Ex-Army Chief and PM Contender

He is a career infantry officer who served about four decades in the army, retired in 2019 and entered politics in 2022. Eisenkot was born in Tiberias on May 19, 1960, the second of four children of Meir and Esther Eisenkot, immigrants from Morocco, and grew up in Eilat.

He joined the Golani Brigade as a conscript and rose through it, commanding the brigade in 1997 and 1998. In 1999 he became military secretary to Ehud Barak, then prime minister and defense minister. He later commanded the Judea and Samaria Division during the Second Intifada, headed the army’s Operations Directorate from June 2005, and took over Northern Command in 2006, after the war with Hezbollah. He was named deputy chief of staff in 2013 and became the 21st chief of staff in February 2015, succeeding Benny Gantz.

His term as chief ended in January 2019. He holds a history degree from Tel Aviv University and studied at the U.S. Army War College.

The Dahiya doctrine is the idea, set out by Eisenkot while he led Northern Command, that Israel should answer attacks from Lebanon with overwhelming force against the areas they come from. It takes its name from Dahiya, the Hezbollah-controlled district of southern Beirut that Israel bombed heavily in 2006.

In a 2008 interview he said that what happened in Dahiya would happen in every village from which Israel was fired on, and that Israel would treat such villages as military bases. Supporters read it as deterrence that kept the Lebanese border quiet for years. Critics, including human rights groups, read it as a policy of disproportionate force against civilian areas.

He entered politics in August 2022 by joining Gantz’s National Unity alliance, and he won a Knesset seat in the November 2022 election. After the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, he joined Netanyahu’s emergency government as a minister and sat in the war cabinet as an observer.

His son, Master Sergeant (res.) Gal Eisenkot, 25, was killed fighting in northern Gaza in December 2023, and two of his nephews were also killed in the war. Eisenkot returned to the war cabinet days after the funeral. In June 2024 he left the government with Gantz, saying political considerations were shaping wartime decisions.

He then broke with Gantz. He announced on July 1, 2025 that he was leaving National Unity, citing the way its candidates were chosen, and handed his resignation from the Knesset to the speaker on July 2. On September 16, 2025 he launched Yashar, Hebrew for “straight” or “upright,” with former Shin Bet director Yoram Cohen second on its list and former minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen third.

Eisenkot campaigns as a security hawk who wants Netanyahu out, and his main promise is accountability for October 7. Yashar’s platform calls for a state commission of inquiry into the attack and the conduct of the war, reform of ultra-Orthodox military exemptions, a stronger army, closer ties with the United States and more peace agreements in the region.

On the Palestinians, he rules out a state. Answering Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas on X in August 2026, he wrote that there is no Palestinian state and that under a government he forms none will be created. On Gaza, he says Hamas must lose its military and governing power, and before the vote he promised to end Hamas rule within 18 months, as our election-day report set out. He opposes Israeli resettlement of Gaza.

On Iran, which his party names as Israel’s main external threat, he backed the 2026 war but said on October 13 that the fall of the Islamic Republic is “necessary” yet not achievable by military means, and that it “needs to come from within the Iranian people.” On the same day he said that, after three years of war, Netanyahu “is not fit to carry out another operation.” On election night he told Israel’s security chiefs to resist political pressure, an appeal Defense Minister Israel Katz called undemocratic, as we reported on October 28.

He sits in the center of Israeli politics: hawkish on security, but against Netanyahu’s bloc on accountability for October 7 and on religion and the state. His positions on a Palestinian state and on keeping forces in Gaza are close to the mainstream right. His demands for an October 7 inquiry and for drafting ultra-Orthodox men, and his attacks on the outgoing coalition, put him with the opposition.

His list reflects that mix. It joins a former Shin Bet chief, a former minister from Gantz’s party and Matan Kahana, a former minister from Naftali Bennett’s right-wing Yamina. Eisenkot himself has called Netanyahu’s government “the most horrible government since the country’s founding” and says he wants a “national Zionist coalition.”

He is the most likely candidate to receive the mandate, but 67 recommendations are not a coalition. His total combines the anti-Netanyahu parties, Yashar, Together, Yisrael Beytenu and the Democrats, with the two Arab parties, Ra’am and the Joint List. The anti-Netanyahu parties hold 48 seats between them, and the Arab parties’ backing does not commit them to join a government. United Torah Judaism recommended no one.

Herzog said on November 5 that the results “appear clear on the surface” but that he must check whether a government can actually be formed, citing mutual vetoes between and within the blocs. Under Israeli law the candidate he names has 28 days to form a government, and the president can extend that by up to 14 days. The new Knesset is due to be sworn in on November 10. How the seats divided is explained in who won Israel’s election.