Introduction
The rise of Gadi Eizenkot and the Yashar Party represents an attempt to build a governing alternative that combines security experience with a call to reform the institutions of the Israeli state after the Gaza war and the crisis of October 7. Its importance lies in its ability to compete with Benjamin Netanyahu within the security domain itself, while offering a different discourse on questions of governance, the judiciary, and conscription. However, its position in the opposition does not automatically translate into a shift in the stance toward Palestinian political rights; his current statements reject the establishment of a Palestinian state, support settlement under Israeli conditions, and adhere to broad Israeli security control.
The report addresses his military background and transition into politics, the founding of the party and its structure and list, its domestic program, and its positions on The West Bank, settlement, and Gaza, then its electoral and coalition prospects and their implications for Jordan. The characterization of positions is based on the official program and dated interviews, while the reading of the relationships among these positions represents an analytical inference. Polls are presented as measurements tied to the time of their publication, not as settled electoral outcomes.
Personal Background and Military Career
Eizenkot began his service in the Golani Brigade in 1978 and advanced through field command. He commanded the Ephraim Brigade between 1994 and 1997, and Golani between 1997 and 1998, then served as military secretary to the prime minister. He commanded The West Bank Division between 2003 and 2005, the Operations Directorate between 2005 and 2006, and the Northern Command between 2006 and 2011, and served as deputy chief of staff between 2013 and 2014. He assumed the position of chief of staff on February 16, 2015, and his term ended in January 2019 after about 41 years of service. These posts link his experience especially to the management of The West Bank and confrontation on the northern front.1
His name is associated with the Dahiya Doctrine, public discussion of which emerged in 2008. The approach is based on responding with extensive destructive force against areas and structures used by the adversary, with the aim of raising the cost of confrontation and deterring it. His party’s website presents this doctrine as part of his military record. This shows that his political image as a man of institutions and internal consensus is accompanied by a security conception that accepts the use of major force against adversaries. The label of center is not sufficient to describe his military policy or its consequences for populations in war zones.2
His son Gal was killed in Jabalia on December 7, 2023, and two of his nephews were also killed during the war. This loss gave his political presence a personal dimension connected to the experience of families affected by the war, but it is not, by itself, suitable as evidence of the nature of his future decisions. His declared positions and record remain the standard for political evaluation.3
The Transition to Politics and the Split from Gantz
Eizenkot entered The Knesset in the 2022 elections within the National Unity camp led by Benny Gantz. After the October 7, 2023 attack, he joined the emergency government as a minister without portfolio and participated as an observer in the small war cabinet. On June 9, 2024, he resigned with Gantz’s departure, criticizing the council’s inability to take the decisions necessary to achieve the war’s objectives and improve Israel’s strategic position. His resignation therefore reflects a disagreement over the leadership of the war and its priorities, and does not mean that he opposed the military operation in principle.4
On June 30, 2025, he announced that he was leaving Gantz’s party and returning his seat to it, then submitted the formal resignation letter from The Knesset on July 2. The dispute was linked to the mechanism for democratizing the party and choosing its leadership, and to the method required to build an alternative capable of winning. He explained that the personal relationship with Gantz remained in place, and that the disagreement concerned the political path. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between his departure from the government in 2024 and his departure from the party and The Knesset in 2025.5
| Date | Development |
| 2022 | His election to The Knesset within the National Unity camp |
| October 2023 | Joining the emergency government and observing the war cabinet |
| June 9, 2024 | Resignation from the government |
| June 30, 2025 | Announcement of departure from Gantz’s party |
| July 2, 2025 | Submission of the formal resignation from The Knesset |
| September 16, 2025 | Announcement of the founding of Yashar |
| September 7, 2026 | Submission of the electoral list |
The Founding of the Yashar Party and Its Organizational Structure
The founding of the Yashar Party with Eizenkot was announced on September 16, 2025, and its name in Hebrew is ישר! עם איזנקוט. The word Yashar carries meanings of honesty, uprightness, and directness, and serves the image of a party that promises to redirect the state. Around 120 founders from the security, economy, technology, and civil society sectors participated.6
Founding reports stated that the party’s bylaws granted Eizenkot the authority to chair it and appoint its members under a temporary arrangement extending to one year after the 2026 elections. This centralization gives him the ability to form the team quickly, but it postpones the test of internal institutionalization to a later stage. Here a question emerges that deserves monitoring: how will the demand for transparency and democratization of political life be transformed into rules for choosing the party’s leadership and list in the future?
In September 2026, he announced the preparation of a charter and ethical code requiring anyone unable to adhere to the party’s path to resign from The Knesset and return the seat. He presented his departure from Gantz as a model of this conduct. The charter reflects concern about defections that could alter the coalition balance, but it remains a party commitment and should not be presented as a legal guarantee preventing every political transfer.
The party presented its list for the twenty-sixth Knesset on September 7, 2026, comprising 40 candidates, with women representing half the list. It requested the letters דרך for the ballot paper, meaning “path.”
Leaderships and the Composition of the List
Eizenkot heads the list, with Yoram Cohen7 in second place. Cohen served as head of the Shin Bet between 2011 and 2016, and previously worked in the Jerusalem and The West Bank sector concurrently with Eizenkot’s command of The West Bank Division. This relationship provides the party with a security core that has shared experience in managing the Palestinian confrontation.
Analytically, the list brings together security institutions, former ministers, technocrats, and social figures. This mix helps Eizenkot present a governing team that goes beyond his individual military experience. But the multiplicity of backgrounds also imposes a later test of the party’s ability to produce shared decisions on religion and state and the Palestinian issue.
Political Identity and the Concept of Mamlakhtiyut
The party defines its goal as preserving Israel as a Jewish, democratic, and strong state, based on the Declaration of Independence. It emphasizes the rule of law, judicial independence, minority rights, and equal opportunities. It uses the concept of mamlakhtiyut to indicate the centrality of the state and its institutions and the prioritization of the public interest over partisan and sectoral loyalty. This is linked to its criticism of the distribution of authorities, budgets, and appointments according to the needs of the coalition.
It can be characterized analytically as a Zionist center party with a security background and hardline positions toward Palestinian sovereignty. This characterization is based on combining its position on domestic institutions with its security and political conditions in the conflict. The competition with Netanyahu takes place over leadership qualifications, the management of force, and the performance of the state, while the extent of difference on settlement and the future of the Palestinians still requires independent examination.
The Party’s Domestic Program8
- Governance and the investigation of October 7
The party pledges an official commission of inquiry covering the October 7 attack, the preceding decade, and the management of the war, alongside programs to rehabilitate those affected and rebuild communities in the south and north. It proposes strengthening judicial independence, regulating the relationship among the branches of government through a Basic Law on legislation, limiting the premiership to two terms, and reducing unnecessary ministries. It also calls for reforming the public service and limiting nonprofessional appointments. These are programmatic commitments whose implementation depends on legislation and the coalition balance.
- Military and civil service
The service-for-all program calls for citizens to be subjected to military, national, or civil tracks, including Haredim and Arabs. The army is given priority in selecting recruits according to its needs, and an independent national administration is proposed to deal directly with candidates for service. It links housing, tax, grant, and service benefits to the performance of service, with a preferential order for combat soldiers, then military personnel, then those performing civil service. This linkage reformulates the distribution of privileges and raises the question of its effect on groups whose relationship with the military establishment varies.
- Education and the economy
The party proposes stronger public education, shared core subjects, a national education council, and broader autonomy for schools and local authorities within central standards. It links full public funding to compliance with public education standards, especially in Haredi institutions. Economically, it focuses on the working class and those who perform service, reducing import barriers, increasing competition, reforming some rules of kashrut 9, and combating the undeclared economy. This approach combines market reform with a reordering of government support.
- Internal security and Jewish immigration
The program includes combating organized crime, violence, and extortion, restoring the institutional character of the police, and a plan for violence in Arab society. It also calls for limiting the departure of Israelis and encouraging the absorption of one million Jewish immigrants over about a decade and an additional million by 2048. These goals clarify the coupling of the economic dimension with the demographic consideration; strengthening the Jewish majority is part of the party’s general conception of the state and its security.
The Position on the Palestinians and Settlement
- The Palestinian state and the Authority
On August 22, 2026, Eizenkot stated that a government he establishes would not found a Palestinian state, in response to statements by Mansour Abbas. The statement provides a direct criterion for assessing his current position; there is no basis for classifying him as a supporter of the two-state solution merely because he competes with Netanyahu. This means that a possible change of prime minister does not in itself guarantee a path toward recognition of Palestinian sovereignty.
In a July 2026 interview, he adhered to Israeli security responsibility between the river and the sea, and rejected the project of dismantling the Palestinian Authority and directly placing responsibility for the population on Israel. He read the transfer of Civil Administration powers to Smotrich as weakening the army’s ability to manage The West Bank, calling for a return to the previous organization and the enforcement of law against Jewish violence. Analytically, these positions give priority to the stability of the administration and security system; preserving the Authority within this conception differs from enabling it to exercise independent sovereignty.10
- Settlement and the E1 project
In a Channel 12 interview on June 6, 2026, he announced his support for settlement in The West Bank on the condition that it conforms to the Israeli national interest and the law. This formulation does not include a commitment to dismantling settlements or adopting the international frame of reference in determining their legality. He also criticized the proposal of a rapid final settlement, considering that addressing the conflict requires a long time. These positions define the limits of difference between him and his opponents in the right-wing camp.
When asked in an Israel Hayom interview on August 27, 2026, about construction tenders in E1, he objected to the timing because of the international price, and linked the decision to coalition pressure on Netanyahu. He criticized Ben-Gvir, Smotrich, and settler violence for causing a loss of international legitimacy and threatening settlement itself. It is therefore accurate to characterize his objection to E1 as an objection to timing and cost as stated in the interview, without turning it into a principled rejection of the project.11
This evidence allows a distinction among three levels: support for the principle of the settlement presence, reservations about some instruments of its expansion, and the demand to restore the centrality of military administration. This may produce a practical disagreement with the religious right over outposts, violence, and powers, while a fundamental disagreement with Palestinian demands regarding land and sovereignty continues. The assessment of any shift remains contingent on actual decisions in planning, budgets, lands, and roads, not on the vocabulary of de-escalation alone.
Gaza, the Detainees, and the Regional Front
In January 2024, Eizenkot criticized the belief that releasing the detainees was possible through military action alone, and stressed the need for a deal that includes a halt to the fighting. In August 2026, he adhered to the army remaining in Gaza until Hamas’s military force is dismantled and weapons are removed, and linked withdrawal to these conditions. Neither position negates the other; his conception combines recognition of the need to negotiate over the detainees with strict security conditions for reorganizing Gaza.
On the Iranian front, he said on October 13, 2026, that an urgent operation could be justified when Iran rushes toward a nuclear weapon, and criticized Netanyahu’s authority to lead a new campaign. He considered the overthrow of the Iranian regime a goal that cannot be achieved by military action alone and requires movement from within. This demonstrates his interest in linking military action to an achievable objective, while maintaining his position against the Iranian regime.12
Analytically, his security presentation rests on the necessity of planning, linking means to clear objectives, and estimating regional cost. This does not necessarily mean reducing the use of force; in a June 2026 interview, he called for expanding freedom of action against Hezbollah in various areas of Lebanon. Thus, the more precise distinction concerns the conception of managing force and the limits of its objectives, and requires examining each front independently.
Coalition Relations and Competition within the Opposition
Eizenkot wants the head of the largest party in the opposition camp to serve as the camp’s nominee for prime minister. This is a political criterion on which he seeks agreement, not a legal rule that gives the largest party an automatic right to the premiership. In August, he criticized the possibility that Bennett or Lieberman might demand the post with a smaller number of seats. This competition reveals that agreement on removing Netanyahu does not eliminate the struggle over leadership of the alternative.
He sets conditions for government partners related to the Jewish and democratic character of the state, the values of the Declaration of Independence, and military, national, or civil service. In June, he did not present an absolute ban on all parties by name, while in August he showed readiness for a minority government as a last option and then to expand it, including Likud after Netanyahu. It is therefore necessary to separate Arab parties’ entry into the coalition, their support from outside, and their abstention from bringing down a government. Conditions and discourse alone are not sufficient to settle which formula the parties will accept.
The challenge arises from combining broad commitments on conscription and institutional reform with the need for partners who may reject some of these obligations. Even if Yashar advances in seats, forming a government remains dependent on bloc recommendations, coalition agreements, and parliamentary discipline. The party’s charter against defection merits monitoring in this context, without assuming that it eliminates the risks of negotiation or internal disagreement.
Palestinian and Jordanian Implications
For Palestinians, Eizenkot’s rise makes possible a difference in the management of control and institutional regulation and in dealing with settler violence, but it does not offer, according to his current positions, a commitment to a Palestinian state. Relations among the army, ministries, and the Palestinian Authority may change without a parallel change in the distribution of sovereignty and resources. Therefore, the outcomes of any government he leads should be measured on the ground, not merely by its position on the party map.
From Jordan’s perspective, monitoring is connected primarily to the future of The West Bank, Palestinian geographic contiguity, and security stability. Opposition to dismantling the Authority may intersect with Jordan’s interest in avoiding broad administrative and security collapse; but the continuation of settlement and rejection of a Palestinian state leave the causes of tension in place. This is a reading of the implications of the declared positions, and does not represent an attribution of a specific program for Jordan to the party. Nor is it permissible to assume a detailed position on Jerusalem and the Hashemite custodianship from general discourse about expanding regional peace.
Priority monitoring indicators include the distribution of powers in The West Bank, the settlement budget, the party’s practical position on E1 and outposts, measures to curb settler violence, the powers of the Palestinian Authority, and the conditions of Gaza arrangements. The interaction among these files will determine whether a change in leadership reduces specific pressures on Jordan, or reproduces them through more regularized administration.
Conclusion
Eizenkot’s project combines the restoration of Israeli institutions with the employment of military experience in building a governing alternative. His party offers a domestic program extending to governance, conscription, education, and the economy, and a list that strengthens its security and administrative image. However, his position on the Palestinians remains constrained by the priority of security, the Jewish majority, and the continuation of settlement, with rejection of a Palestinian state. His objections to Smotrich and E1 reveal a disagreement over administration, timing, and cost, without alone proving a shift in the objectives of control.
His future depends on transforming electoral strength into stable coalition consensus, and on the new party’s ability to function as an institution. As for assessing its regional impact, this requires distinguishing between changing the style of governance and changing actual policy in the Palestinian territories. This distinction makes monitoring decisions, legislation, and the distribution of powers more important than general classifications of center and right.
