Gadi Eisenkot, the man who could unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, almost always dresses in plain black, speaks halting English and, reflecting the military culture that shapes him, responds in interviews in bullet-point lists.
Serious and unassuming, Mr. Eisenkot is in many ways the opposite of Mr. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest serving Prime Minister, who has flawless American-accented English and is ever ready with headline-grabbing soundbites on U.S. television or social media.
I think Mr. Eisenkot has that appeal. Mr. Netanyahu’s government. But the military man is no peacenik. He has even sought to play to the right of Mr. His working-class roots constitute another element of his appeal. He would be the first Prime Minister who is Sephardic, Jews who trace their recent origins to the West Asia and North Africa.
On Gaza, he has vowed to end Hamas rule within 18 months.
“There is a large camp in Israel whose main goal in the coming election is just for things to be calmer,” said Tal Elovits, a researcher at the Molad think tank. “The middle class,” he said, “is looking for someone who will look responsible, boring. Eisenkot has vowed to crack down on West Bank settlers who have attacked Palestinians with impunity and recently beat up an American journalist and a French mayor, decrying the incidents as “Jewish terror” abetted by Mr. Last week he said this could be achieved either through the implementation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ceasefire plan, which envisages Hamas’s gradual disarmament and a transfer of power, or through “creative operations” aimed at destroying the movement’s military wing.
Netanyahu by vowing no Palestinian state, replaying clips from an earlier political era in which the long-serving Prime Minister begrudgingly voiced openness to the idea under U.S. pressure.
