Gadi Eisenkot is not arguing that Israel failed to hit its enemies hard enough. His case against Benjamin Netanyahu is almost the opposite: Israel delivered powerful blows, but too often failed to turn them into the political or strategic outcome it wanted.
That argument has become a central part of the former military chief’s campaign as Israel heads toward its October 27 election, the first national vote since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023 and the wars that followed in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran. Reuters describes Eisenkot, now leader of the centrist Yashar party, as one of Netanyahu’s main challengers, with his military record forming a large part of his political appeal.
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| Gadi Eisenkot, former IDF chief of staff and leader of Israel’s Yashar party, pictured during his 2026 election campaign. Photo: Yahav Trudler / Gadi Eisenkot spokesperson via Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC |
In a recent Channel 12 interview, Eisenkot returned to one of the most secretive Israeli operations of the war: the effort to plant explosive communications equipment inside Hezbollah.
“The Mossad brings an ingenious proposal in Lebanon — to prepare a trap for Hezbollah, to plant tens of thousands of explosives with them, so that we kill them on the day of reckoning,” Eisenkot said. He said he pushed for the broader operation to be activated while serving in the war cabinet, arguing that it could have killed between 7,000 and 15,000 Hezbollah operatives.
The plan he described went far beyond the pager explosions that stunned Lebanon in September 2024.
The operation behind the pagers
Israel’s penetration of Hezbollah’s communications network had been years in the making.
Mossad chief David Barnea later said the walkie-talkie operation had been conceived roughly a decade earlier, with the pager plan added later. He also said only about 500 pagers had reached Lebanon before October 7, 2023, while far greater numbers were in Hezbollah hands by the time Israel detonated them in September 2024.
On September 17, thousands of pagers exploded across Lebanon. A second wave involving walkie-talkies followed the next day. Contemporary reporting documented thousands of injuries and dozens of deaths across the two days, including people not identified as Hezbollah fighters.
Eisenkot’s complaint is that this was only a partial use of a much larger concept.
He told Channel 12 that while he did not know the details of the pager component at the time, he did know of a much broader plan involving communications equipment and urged Netanyahu to authorize it. According to Eisenkot, the prime minister did not.
Former defense minister Yoav Gallant has made a related argument. He has said the original concept centered more heavily on explosive walkie-talkies that Hezbollah fighters would carry during a major confrontation, potentially placing far more operatives within reach of the operation.
‘Three years later, Hamas still has 30,000’
Eisenkot applies the same criticism to Gaza.
Israeli assessments put Hamas’s armed strength before October 7 at roughly 30,000 fighters. Nearly three years later, Israeli reporting again estimates the group at roughly 25,000 to 30,000 armed operatives after recruitment and rebuilding.
For Eisenkot, that number is evidence that battlefield losses did not produce the result Netanyahu repeatedly promised.
He has said that a government led by him would either dismantle Hamas militarily or force the organization out of power, and has accused Netanyahu of talking about “total victory” without delivering a durable postwar structure in Gaza.
That criticism is not new. Eisenkot has argued for months that Hamas’s military force was rebuilt even after severe Israeli losses were inflicted on it, and that Israel failed to create a political order capable of preventing that regeneration.
His position on withdrawal from Gaza follows the same logic. He has said Israel should not complete a full military withdrawal until Hamas’s armed capability has been dismantled and Gaza demilitarized — a process he says could take years.
Iran: strong enough to survive air power
On Iran, Eisenkot has also pushed back against the idea that air superiority automatically produces political collapse.
He has supported Israeli military action against Iran and publicly backed the killing of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli strikes in February. Reuters reported that Khamenei died in the opening assault of that war.
Eisenkot has described Khamenei not simply as a political leader but as the commander at the top of Iran’s military hierarchy. In another interview, he said he regarded the strike as justified and that, had he been prime minister, he would have approved the killing of Khamenei and Iran’s senior command structure.
But that support comes with a limit.
Months before, Eisenkot had already questioned whether air power could deliver regime change in Tehran. “Would the use of air power bring regime change? I doubt it,” he said during negotiations over Iran earlier this year.
That distinction runs through much of his argument about Iran: killing senior commanders or destroying military infrastructure can produce major tactical gains, but a state as large and resilient as Iran does not necessarily collapse because aircraft dominate its skies.
Against annexing millions of Palestinians
Eisenkot also draws a line on the West Bank.
He has repeatedly warned that extending permanent Israeli sovereignty over the entire territory while absorbing millions of Palestinians would move Israel toward a binational state. Years before the current election, he was already warning that annexation without separation could undermine Israel’s character as both Jewish and democratic.
His position, however, should not be confused with support for the conventional two-state formula now promoted by many European governments.
Eisenkot has also said that a two-state solution after October 7 would be a serious mistake, while arguing that Israel must avoid permanently incorporating the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank.
That leaves him advocating a harder-to-define middle course: maintain Israeli security freedom of action, oppose immediate Palestinian statehood, but also reject a permanent one-state arrangement in which Israel governs millions of Palestinians.
The election is turning into an argument over what ‘victory’ means
The contrast Eisenkot is drawing with Netanyahu is not between war and restraint.
Both men favor military force against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. Eisenkot’s criticism is about what should happen after force is used — and whether tactical success has been mistaken for strategic success.
He points to Hezbollah and says Israel possessed a larger operation than the one eventually activated.
He points to Gaza and says Hamas has rebuilt toward its prewar manpower.
He points to Iran and argues that devastating air strikes still did not mean regime collapse.
And on the West Bank, he warns that taking more territory without deciding what happens to the Palestinians living there could create a different strategic problem altogether.
That debate is now part of an election in which both leading camps are competing to define who can better protect Israel after three years of war.
For Eisenkot, the test is no longer whether Israel can hit hard.
It is whether the strike changes what comes next.
Sources
- N12 / Channel 12 — Eisenkot on the wider Hezbollah communications-device plan and his criticism of Netanyahu’s handling of it.
- Reuters — Eisenkot’s challenge to Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s October 27 election.
- Israel Hayom — Eisenkot’s positions on Iran, Hezbollah and the West Bank.
- Ynet — Eisenkot on Hamas, Gaza demilitarization and the limits of air power in producing regime change in Iran.
- Reuters — Ali Khamenei’s death in the February 2026 U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.