Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot, a former minister and former IDF chief, criticizes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for accepting US President Donald Trump’s dictate that the IDF’s battle against Hezbollah be restricted to southern Lebanon.
In a Channel 12 interview, Eisenkot says the IDF must have “freedom of action” against Hezbollah, including to target it in its Dahiya stronghold in Beirut, because otherwise “we lose the war” against the terror group.
Netanyahu, he says, needed to make this clear to Trump, while noting that the IDF would not target Lebanese national infrastructure. Trump, who recognizes that defeating Hezbollah is also an American interest, would have understood if the argument was made effectively to him, Eisenkot says.
Eisenkot, who in a Thursday survey by Channel 12 was preferred to Netanyahu as prime minister for the first time, and whose Yashar is rising in the polls, says he is certain that “Netanyahu will lose” the upcoming elections. He says it is unthinkable that the prime minister who was in power on October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded, would be returned to office when Israel goes to the polls this fall.
Netanyahu, he adds, has now presided over two-and-a-half years of war, in which, amid significant achievements by the IDF, there has not been definitive success against Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas. He attributes this to Netanyahu’s leadership failings, including a lack of courage and contempt for strategy.
He also calls on the newly elected state comptroller, Michael Rabello, to refuse to take up the post, both because the process by which Rabello was elected in the Knesset on Wednesday was “corrupt” and because his previous work representing and advising Netanyahu makes him an inappropriate choice for the independent watchdog role.
MKs taking their phones to video what the law requires to be a secret ballot, in order to demonstrate that they were backing Netanyahu’s candidate, marked “a new low” for the Knesset, he says.
Eisenkot also criticizes the choice of David Zini as the new Shin Bet chief and of Roman Gofman as Mossad head, while praising their IDF service and noting that he commanded and promoted both of them.
Asked about remarks by opposition leader Yair Lapid this week predicting that Eisenkot would join Lapid and former prime minister Naftali Bennett on a joint list for the elections, he calls the prediction “strange” and says he and Lapid have not spoken for several months. He had suggested that they all work together to oust the “worst government” in Israeli history, including by setting up a shadow cabinet, but Bennett and Lapid did not wish to adopt the idea.
Eisenkot stresses that he “will not compromise” on the imperative for all eligible Israelis to perform mandatory military service.
He says he has never proposed “two states for two peoples” and that those who talk of “peace now” with the Palestinians do not appreciate the depth of the conflict, especially since October 7, 2023.
He says he is a “great believer in Jewish settlements… in line with Israel’s interests” and specifies his support for the major settlement blocs. Israel’s prime interests, however, require avoiding becoming a Jewish minority state. His focus, he says, is on policies that strengthen Israel as a Jewish, democratic, powerful, equal, liberal” country.
