The Former General Who Could End the Netanyahu Era

Oct 25, 2026 11:00 AM UTCGadi Eisenkot, a candidate for Israeli prime minister, in Jerusalem on Oct. 22.Gadi Eisenkot, a candidate for Israeli prime minister, in Jerusalem on Oct. 22.Ofir Berman for TIME Oct 25, 2026 11:00 AM UTCGadi Eisenkot’s office is small and sparsely furnished. There are no medals on display, no photographs with foreign dignitaries or political luminaries, none of the trappings of a decorated general who rose to become chief of staff of Israel’s military. The space, tucked inside a commercial building in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat HaSharon, is conspicuously devoid of ostentation.Beside his desk sit three photographs. One is of his son Gal, who was killed fighting in Gaza in Dec. 2023, two months after the war began. Another is a family portrait taken during a visit to Washington, D.C., years earlier, a picture of a family still whole, before the war shattered it. The third shows Gal next to one of his closest friends from their military unit, who was also killed in combat. “He was a settler,” Eisenkot says of his son’s friend. The image conveys a snapshot of contemporary Israel: the son of a centrist military commander and a young man from a West Bank settl...