Former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, the son of Moroccan immigrants, has vowed to restore Israel's security, unity and democratic institutions. (EPA Images pic)JERUSALEM: As Israel heads into a fiercely contested general election on Oct 27, former military chief Gadi Eisenkot has emerged as the principal challenger to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.Eisenkot's rise comes at a pivotal moment in Israeli politics, with the election widely viewed as a referendum on the long-serving premier's leadership in the violent aftermath of Hamas's Oct 7, 2023, attack on Israel.A recent Channel 12 poll put Eisenkot's new party, Yashar (Hebrew for "Straight" or "Upright"), ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, projecting 23 seats to Likud's 22 in the 120-member Knesset.The same survey found that 43% of respondents considered Eisenkot, 66, the most suitable candidate for prime minister, compared with 34% for Netanyahu.Eisenkot -- who has dismissed calls for a future Palestinian state as irrelevant after the Oct 7 attacks and pioneered Israel's strategy of disproportionate military responses in Lebanon -- has built his campaign around a 10-point platform that he says will restore Israel's security, unity and democratic institutions.Chief of staff of the Israeli military between 2015 and 2019, Eisenkot was among those credited with developing the "Dahiya Doctrine", named after a Beirut suburb that is a Hezbollah stronghold.Advanced on the premise that Hezbollah conceals fighters and weapons among civilian homes and infrastructure, the doctrine calls for a devastating Israeli response against enemy population centres when Israeli communities come under long-range attack.At the top of his civilian manifesto is a pledge to establish a state commission of inquiry into Hamas's bloody 2023 cross-border attack, which triggered the Gaza war and quickly expanded into a broader regional conflict, and which led to Netanyahu's government being accused of overseeing an intelligence failure.Tens of thousands of Israelis have repeatedly demonstrated in support of such an inquiry, but Netanyahu's coalition has instead proposed a commission whose members would be chosen by politicians.Eisenkot also promises a "new long-term national security doctrine" aimed at strengthening the military and reinforcing Israel's borders.A central plank of this is a "universal national service law" that would extend co…
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