TEL AVIV, 08 Nov. - (ANA) - Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, has a pathway to Israel's top job after President Isaac Herzog tapped him to form the next government.

 

Should he succeed, he would take over as prime minister from Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving premier who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes.

 

Eisenkot, by contrast, is a reserved man, and some voters tired of Netanyahu see his rival's relative lack of charisma as one of his greatest assets.

 

His wide-ranging opposition bloc won 48 of the Israeli parliament's 120 seats in October elections, while Netanyahu's camp secured 53, leaving neither with a majority.

 

During party consultations with Herzog, 66-year-old Eisenkot received the endorsements of both Arab-majority lists, who could now play kingmakers after making unprecedented gains in the vote.

 

But it remains unclear if Eisenkot's bloc would accept support from the Arab lists in forming a government.

 

Serious and unassuming, he is in many ways the opposite of Netanyahu, who has flawless American-accented English and is ever ready with headline-grabbing soundbites for US television and social media.

 

Eisenkot, the military chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, has set out to unite Israelis after Netanyahu's divisive tenure, under which the country moved sharply to the right.

 

He has vowed to crack down on extremist West Bank settlers who have attacked Palestinians with impunity, decrying recent incidents as "Jewish terror" abetted by Netanyahu's government.

 

But the military man is no peacenik. He opposes the creation of a Palestinian state and vowed to end Hamas's rule in Gaza and destroy the Islamist movement's military wing.

 

Commanding the military during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Eisenkot devised the so-called "Dahiya doctrine". The idea, named after a Beirut suburb heavily damaged in that war, involves Israel vowing to use massive force against civilian infrastructure in areas controlled by Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah.

 

Israel has adopted the doctrine again in Gaza, causing destruction, war crimes, and genocide.

 

On international relations, he vowed to deepen Israel's ties with its closest ally, the United States, where once bipartisan views on Israel have been soured by the wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/08 November 2026 - - -