Netanyahu vs. Eisenkot: The test that will decide who is worthy to lead Israel
Their distant past is less important now. What must decide is the way they have acted since October 7. While Eisenkot advocated for stopping the war and avoiding regional expansion, Netanyahu adopted an offensive strategy against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
The general impression, as well as the polls — suspected of manipulation from opposing directions — show that the upcoming elections will be primarily a competition between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Lt. Gen. (res.) Eisenkot. Therefore, it is important to know where they are headed on the fundamental issues of the struggle with the Arabs over the land and in the war with Iran.
"Strategic" PR consultants are likely advising Eisenkot to remain vague on these questions. It is difficult to determine with certainty what his perceptions will be as a leader based on his years in key positions in the General Staff and army command, although they testify to something: he was a central figure in the military leadership that dangerously reduced ground forces, shied away from using them, and focused on airstrikes as a primary method of action ("the deterrence doctrine").
The officer corps, of which Eisenkot is a distinct representative, based the force buildup and the army's operational concept on abandoning the path of preemptive war, and moved to rhetoric about "burning the consciousness" of the enemy, deterring and exhausting it instead of defeating it. Apparently, they were guided by the erroneous assumption that the enemy is rational like us, and therefore would prefer to prevent suffering for "its" population. This can be called "blindness in the face of barbarism."
But perhaps Eisenkot has sobered up and changed his positions? That is legitimate. After all, our entire leadership, political and military, suffered from strategic errors until October 7. Therefore, the actions of Eisenkot or Netanyahu in the not-so-distant past, that is, in the decade before the war, only hint, and are not sufficient for judging the leadership they offer us for the future, for the continuation of the war in Iran and in the country.
When we come to choose a prime minister, that is, a leader, we must first of all evaluate what strategy he will promote in the critical years ahead. For this, it is less important to evaluate the not-so-distant past, and more important are his positions in the recent past, that is, during the war years.
The same principle of "looking to the future," based on the recent past, applies to the question of whether to support Netanyahu in the elections. Less important is the relatively distant past, for example, the willingness to discuss the Golan with Assad (1997-1998, 2010-2011) or the "Bar-Ilan speech" (2009) — two matters that still occupy the people of the "principled right" who oppose him. So too is the maintenance of the Gaza Strip with Qatari money, an error that Netanyahu and Eisenkot are full partners in, and it is part of the entire leadership's reluctance — and with it the public itself — to engage in a preemptive war in Gaza.
More important is the Netanyahu-Trump plan from a few years ago to apply the law in the Jordan Valley and the settlement blocs in the territories. And even more important is the momentum of settlement in Samaria and Judea under the outgoing government. On the essential questions for the future, regarding the Palestinians and the Iranians, Eisenkot obfuscates his positions, while Netanyahu has moved to a militant and clear strategy. But more than anything, the actions of the two in the war, after October 7, are what should determine our assessment of their plans for the future. Gantz and Eisenkot, unlike their irresponsible colleagues in the opposition, joined the government at the beginning of the war.
But Eisenkot was a partner in the Americans' far-fetched aspiration to "put the genie back in the bottle" and prevent expansion into a "regional war." This is the background to his resignation from the government after his demands, which meant stopping the war at an early stage, were not accepted. In contrast, Netanyahu broke away from the strategy that led to October 7, and is conducting a preemptive war to uproot the Iranian nuclear program, Hamas, and Hezbollah. Here lies the fundamental difference between them.
Netanyahu managed to force upon Eisenkot's counterparts, the previous Minister of Defense and Chief of Staff, Rafah, the pagers, the elimination of Nasrallah, and the destruction of the Syrian army. He abandoned the containment and deterrence school of Eisenkot and his colleagues. Israel captured territories in the Gaza Strip, in Lebanon, and in Syria, emptied them of residents, and established international consensus that any withdrawal is conditional on the dismantling of the terrorist armies. All this on the way to two destructive strikes on Iran.
Netanyahu identified that a regional war is ahead of us and there is no escaping it. If Eisenkot's proposal to run away from this reality had been accepted, we would now be wallowing in defeat before a nuclear Iran. This is enough to establish a rational choice between them. Eisenkot's perceptions are not suitable for the expected campaign against the Iranians and the Palestinians.
The author is a historian at Ben-Gurion University.
