Eisenkot Must Stay Silent, Netanyahu Needs a Partner: The 'Face-to-Face' Election Stage

Make no mistake: the election results are wide open. The number of undecided voters, the players on the fence, the flexible public, and the record number of new voters are creating a fascinating battle here, the likes of which we have not seen. Everyone knows how to tell with certainty what will happen, but there are two players who will shape the morning we wake up to on October 28. So what do they need to do?

2026 Elections for the 26th Knesset | Mandate polls, bloc map and updates

Eisenkot: Move quickly from growth to preservation

There is a huge difference between a campaign for increasing recognition and a campaign for preserving voters. When you want to create exposure, you bring an "Uvda" reporter to sit with you in the car. You pay prices when you show the showcase of the sausage factory ("What do I need to do so they think I'm on the right?"), but you gain a calculated jump: if they don't know you, they won't vote for you, if they know you - at least some will come. It worked, next.

Now, when you need to create preservation, it is best to mostly be silent. Play bunker. Eisenkot's recent interviews created mostly headlines of the wrong kind, such as the comparison between Yoseph Haddad and Mansour Abbas, the terminology of disengagement, or the attack on "Itamar Smotrich" who is dismantling the Palestinian Authority. It could have been skipped.

Stop talking about Mansour: at the beginning of the week, Eisenkot set a "condition" for Mansour Abbas that he would enter the government if he agreed to national service for the Arab sector. That's great, only it's as interesting as Ben Gvir's position on green energy. The Israeli public's reservation (including 44% of opposition voters) regarding Ra'am is around the fear, for example, that they will prevent a future war against Hamas. Not two days passed - and Abbas refused on Kan 11 to answer even the question "Should Hamas be destroyed?".

Get hands into the mud and take care of the bloc: there are three candidates for prime minister in the change bloc — Eisenkot, Lieberman, and Bennett. None of them shows a willingness to give up the job even under moderate physical pressure. The opposition's loss in the previous elections started because of the neglect of the architecture; the potential for victory this time starts exactly there.

Yes, the public wants Gadi boring. He needs to run an Ariel Sharon campaign, stop spontaneous appearances, and create only controlled communication around issues that are in consensus. The sentence "no one regretted an interview they didn't give" sounds good, but it is not accurate. The truth is that no leading candidate regretted an interview they didn't give. Time for Vipassana.

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Netanyahu: If you want to buy change, it's better to be the seller

The Likud chairman is trying in a strange split to convince the public that change is not needed, and also that he is the change. Netanyahu is redesigning the Likud list, only at the end of the noise, no vote-attracting stars are emerging who are expected to arrive at the party. He also declares his desire for a broad national government, only he does not give up the lovely bloc with Goldknopf and Deri.

Let's say it gently: Netanyahu is not and will not be an alternative candidate, therefore he needs a right-wing change party next to him that will collect the votes that want him but not his coalition. Gadi has Chili Tropper who talks about unity but will agree to complete him to 61; Bibi needs his own Tropper.

The problem, as usual, is that Netanyahu is a paranoid with receipts and any attempt by candidates to emerge brings with it immediate thwarting: about Winter they brief that he will be the next "Silman", about Erdan they are not ready to hear, not to mention Gantz, Meridor, and Yuli. Netanyahu literally insists on sending the voters who are repulsed by Likud to the opposing bloc. If customers ask to diversify the shelf, don't send them to the store across the street.

Decentralize the opposition: Yair Golan brought back into fashion the right-left discourse in its original format and became Netanyahu's preferred campaigner. It must be said honestly: Golan is running a campaign that is right for Golan. In an election where everyone tells how right-wing they are, the Democrats is the only party that does not claim to be such. The chairman of the Democrats received a pool of voters that brought four mandates to the last Knesset and brought it back to life from the political grave. Only the statements against the settlers, about closing Channel 14, in favor of a Palestinian state, and about his desire to be Minister of Defense - create for Netanyahu campaign materials that do not require any AI. All that remains for him is to remind that a vote for Gadi is also a vote for Gabi. Leski.

Deep State: sometimes it seems that Netanyahu's rivals missed the news that the elections have already arrived - you don't need to topple the government, you just need to vote against it at the ballot box. And so, if Eisenkot is the ultimate painkiller for the undecided public, the non-parliamentary opposition, the Supreme Court, and the media are their migraine. Netanyahu's trial, the blocking of appointments, the threat of firing senior officials, and of course the wholesale cancellation of laws by the Supreme Court - help Netanyahu explain that there are those who decide the result without connection to the vote, and then call to revolt against their rule at the ballot box. When Bibi lights the Deep State bonfire, it is better to refrain from supplying him with oil.

Netanyahu is the only candidate who is also the screenwriter of the series called "2026 Elections": he will make sure to show us war or peace, maybe both together. The political-security agenda is the convenient agenda for him; his expertise is to explain for 30 years that "we are in the midst of a historical process, one must not stop in the middle". As the scriptwriter, be sure that the sense of emergency will fit perfectly with the season finale episode, the one where they go to the ballot boxes.