Is Bibi going down. Will his opponent ease up on Iran?

Either way, Iran is on tap for a world of hurt. Eisenkot is more willing to avoid scorched earth but still leans hard right (as does the majority of Israel's population).

Is This the End for Benjamin Netanyahu?

If Israel’s election ends in a stalemate, the Prime Minister can stay in power to finish the job in Iran.

By The Editorial Board, WSJ

Oct. 23, 2026 5:32 pm ET

The political graveyards are full of retired Israeli generals who tried to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot is the latest, but the traumas of the past four years have shifted the argument in complex ways. Israeli voters want change—and are also more right-wing. That may be why Mr. Eisenkot’s Yashar party leads most polls before Tuesday’s election but may not be able to form a coalition government even if he “wins.”

In that case Mr. Netanyahu would stay Prime Minister for months until a second election. Those months, following U.S. midterms, could be decisive for the war in Iran. President Trump made clear Iran was top of mind in the endorsement he gave Mr. Netanyahu on Sunday.

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Israeli voters have largely made up their minds, one way or the other, on big questions: Was Oct. 7 Mr. Netanyahu’s failure or would the military and intelligence failures have occurred no matter who was leader? And who gets credit for the military achievements since, diminishing existential threats from Hezbollah’s missile arsenal and Iran’s nuclear program?

The outcome may turn instead on the fate of two small parties, which will either inch over Israel’s electoral threshold at 3.25% of the vote or miss the Knesset. Much of the hope for a centrist unity government also rests on smaller parties using their leverage to demand it.

Mr. Eisenkot pledges he won’t form a government with Mr. Netanyahu, or with the Arab and Haredi Jewish parties that don’t support the state’s existence. But at other times he has signaled flexibility. To have a chance to form a government, he may need it.

The popular demand to enlist young Haredi Jews in the army has powered the opposition. Israel needs the soldiers, and the Haredi exemption became offensive as casualties rose. Mr. Netanyahu may agree in private, but he has paid a political price for his Haredi allies.

Mr. Eisenkot presents himself as equally as tough as the Prime Minister, and voters know he lost a son and two nephews fighting in the war. Born to Moroccan immigrants and raised in an Israeli city far from the Tel Aviv center, his everyman story also resonates. Not notably charismatic or proficient in English, Mr. Eisenkot doesn’t try to beat Mr. Netanyahu at his own game. His gruff demeanor and monotone delivery offer a contrast.

Mr. Eisenkot blames Mr. Netanyahu and his bloc for the failure on Oct. 7 and the diplomatic free fall amid the war. The latter won’t stop without new leadership, the opposition says—anyone but “Bibi.”

Mr. Eisenkot also sounds hawkish notes on Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria, though he could be more willing to trade Israel’s buffers on the latter three fronts for new political arrangements. He promises to dismantle West Bank outposts built contrary to Israeli law, while maintaining, “I am for settlement and against a Palestinian state.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s case is that he has done and will do everything to defeat Iran’s terrorist regime, and is needed to finish the job alongside Mr. Trump. The Prime Minister owns the issue, and justly so. He contrasts this with Gen. Eisenkot’s 2018 assessment that Israel could have to “adapt itself” to living under nuclear threat.

Mr. Netanyahu says his challenger’s right-wing campaign statements can’t be trusted. In late 2023 and early 2024 Mr. Eisenkot was the first in the unity war cabinet to propose ending the war—before Israel’s key military successes.

“[Either the] Right or Palestine” goes a Netanyahu slogan. It reflects his expectation that Israel will soon face tremendous Western pressure for concessions, with little care that the “Palestine” in question would probably become a Gaza-like terror state. Only the Netanyahu-led right can stand firm, he says.

From the course of the war, there’s evidence for that. But under Mr. Netanyahu and his further-right partners, the opposition says, Israel will lose all Western support and bring on the disasters both sides seek to prevent. Better to change horses after 19 years of Mr. Netanyahu as PM, they say, and not alienate the West.

One thing is certain: Israelis won’t be voting on normal pocketbook issues, the way other democracies do. The International Monetary Fund’s latest growth forecast for Israel is 4.5% in 2026, the highest of the OECD’s 38 advanced economies. But every election in Israel is fundamentally about the Jewish state’s survival in a very bad neighborhood.