Event: Gadi Eisenkot

Gadi Eisenkot | Photo Credit: Illustration: Sreejith. R Kumar Anti-Netanyahu politics — this lies at the heart of Gadi Eisenkot’s campaign for the coming Israeli elections. According to several opinion polls, the strategy appears to be working.With Israel set to go the polls on Tuesday (October 27, 2026), Mr. Eisenkot’s year-old centrist party, Yashar (Hebrew for Straight), is projected to win 20 of 120 seats in parliament, putting it ahead of Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud.While Yashar’s emergence as a frontrunner is a recent phenomenon, Mr. Eisenkot, the man helming this change, is far from new. For much of the world and Israelis, he is known for articulating the ‘Dahiya doctrine’ — a military tactic which received international condemnation for advocating the use of disproportionate force in areas where militants are operating from — and as a critic of Mr. Netanyahu’s strategy just months after the October 7 Hamas attack in 2023.During the campaign, he has posed himself not merely as a politician promising to end forever wars but as someone who resonates with Israelis fatigued by a prolonging conflict.Mr. Eisenkot was born to Moroccan immigrants in Tiberias and spent most of his childhood in Eilat. With a working class background, he has portrayed himself as an everyday person to voters. If Mr. Eisenkot manages to win a parliamentary majority, he would be the first Mizrahi – Jews of West Asian or North African descent – to become the country’s Prime Minister.Military careerHis enlistment in the Golani Brigade, one of Israel Defense Forces’ premier infantry units, when he was 18, marked the beginning of his 41-year military career. After rising through the ranks of the brigade, he served as the Chief of Staff from 2015 to 2019.The 66-year-old entered politics relatively late, joining Benny Gantz’s National Unity party in August 2022. Less…

Israel said on Sunday (October 25, 2026) all land crossings with the West Bank will be closed on the day of next week's election, as it pledged a harder line on militancy after Palestinian gunmen killed two soldiers in the territory.The announcement came a day after Israeli forces pushed into the occupied West Bank city of Hebron and displaced around 2,000 residents, with Defence Minister Israel Katz saying, "they will not be allowed to return... until we've finished dealing with all the Hamas issues in Hebron".Hamas, while not claiming credit, hailed Friday's (October 23) killings at a checkpoint near the Palestinian city, in which attackers shot dead two Israeli soldiers and wounded three more.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to exact a heavy price for the attack just days before polls and said he was planning an operation on a scale not seen since Israel first occupied the West Bank in 1967.The Israeli Army said that, from Sunday (October 25), Palestinians would "not be permitted to enter Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley for work", using terms many in Israel use to refer to the West Bank.The Army also said it would enforce "a ban on the entry and exit of Palestinian workers throughout Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley, including industrial zones, as well as the closure of all land crossings throughout Election Day" on October 27, it added.Israel's longest serving Prime Minister Netanyahu is facing a tight race for a new term in Tuesday's (October 27) polls, with his security-first reputation all but shattered by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack.The Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous body that governs parts of the West Bank in cooperation with Israel, called for international pressure on Israel to protect residents affected by the military operation.The Israeli Army said that…

Live Blog Update| War on Iran 25 October 2026 01:40 BST Israeli army has said Palestinians with work permits will be barred from settlements in the occupied West Bank, except industrial zones and other approved areas, on Sunday and Monday. In a post on X, it added that there will be a complete ban on the “entry and exit of Palestinian workers to all of [the occupied West Bank], and the Jordan Valley, including industrial zones, and the closure of all land crossings, throughout the entire election day, 27 October 2026.”  Palestinian labourers pass between fences and gates at the Israeli army crossing of Eyal as they cross from the West Bank town of Qalqilya to work in Israel in May 2016. (AFP file)

Thousands gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday for a large anti-government demonstration, three days ahead of a general election widely viewed as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The protest was organised by the October Council, a group founded by the families of victims and hostages taken by Palestinian militants on 7 October 2023, to demand accountability for the failure to prevent the Hamas attack that sparked the Gaza war. According to Israeli media, the gathering saw the participation of the leaders of the four main opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot, the former military chief of staff who is neck and neck with Netanyahu and who received a warm reception from the crowd. "Three days before the election, we will hold the culminating event marking three years of struggle to uncover the truth, demand accountability, and establish a state commission of inquiry," the October Council wrote on X ahead of the rally.  Thousands were marching from the central Rabin Square towards Hostages Square, a focal point for past anti-government protests to demand the release of those held captive in Gaza. "Whoever has been leading us for the past four years (since Netanyahu's government took office in late 2022) has done such a terrible job," Hadas Feuershtein, 68, told AFP shortly before the start of the rally. "Israel has never been in a situation as it is now," she added. Report by AFP

Palestinians watch as Israeli machinery demolishes a Palestinian house following a shooting attack, in Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, October 23, 2026. | Photo Credit: Reuters The Israeli ‌military forced around 1,200 Palestinians to leave their homes in Hebron in the ​occupied West Bank, a Palestinian official said on Saturday (October 24, 2026), a day ⁠after a Palestinian attack killed two Israeli soldiers.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday (October 23) had said the military would launch a large-scale operation after the soldiers were killed when two Palestinian gunmen ‌opened fire at a military checkpoint near the city. The Israeli military said the gunmen were shot dead.They also said the operation in ‌the Al-Jaladah and Ein Deir Baha neighbourhoods near the military checkpoint at the ‌entrance of ⁠Hebron was to search for militants and weapons. In a statement, ⁠it also said the military would carry out demolitions.The Palestinian Authority criticised the operation as a “collective punishment”.Yousef Zouhair Al-Jabari, the head of Hebron’s municipality, said around 1,300 faced losing their homes in addition ​to the 1,200 already displaced.He also said ‌the Israeli operations were motivated by parliamentary elections on Tuesday (October 27) when Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition may lose his majority, opinion polls show.“Netanyahu and the radical ministers in his government are trying to win as many votes as possible from the ‌settlers,” Mr. Al-Jabari said.The non-governmental organisation the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club said Israeli forces had ​arrested around 70 Palestinians on Friday (October 23) and Saturday (October 24). Israeli officials have not commented on any arrests.Netanyahu’s government has presided over expansion of settlementsMr. Al-Jabari said ⁠the military had demolished shops, factories, homes, and roads in Hebron and that the response was disproportionate and unjustified.Residents in Hebron told Reuters that the military expelled many people ‌with no connection to the Palestinian…

Israeli troops have levelled a neighbourhood in Hebron, driving out hundreds of families in collective punishment for a militant attack on an army checkpoint outside the West Bank city, local Palestinian authorities said.The Hebron municipality estimated that 35 hectares (86 acres) had been destroyed or marked for destruction and about 1,500 people had been evicted from their homes by Saturday afternoon in the district of Ein Deir Baha. The whole city of 250,000 people was sealed off by checkpoints on every point of entry.Videos sent by a Hebron resident showed a substantial area of devastation with every house over several blocks flattened in an urban area. One video showed soldiers marking Palestinian houses with a sprayed black cross, another showed a bulldozer tearing down a stone wall on a hillside and another showed a large residential building festooned with Israeli flags.Soldiers patrol the northern checkpoint in Hebron after Israeli forces levelled a neighbourhood in Hebron. Photograph: John Wessels/AFP/GettyPeople said the building was the home of a prominent Hebron family that had been commandeered as a temporary military headquarters.The large-scale demolitions follow an attack on Friday on an Israeli military checkpoint outside Hebron by two gunmen. After a 20-minute gunfight, two Israeli soldiers were killed, three injured and the two gunmen were also killed.Israeli elections will take place in four days and the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the extreme-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, travelled to the site of the attack to promise an immediate and ferocious response.Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, filmed himself wearing body armour in front of a Palestinian building being demolished. Photograph: Ammar Awad/ReutersNetanyahu said Israel would “act to destroy this place”. Smotrich who is standing for election in a smaller coalition party, had himself filmed wearing body armour in front of a Palestinian building being demolished.…

Settlers have intimidated Palestinians harvesting their olives in ‌the occupied West Bank ​for decades, but violence has increased sharply this year, according ⁠to Palestinians, activists and the UN. File | Photo Credit: AP Five Italian activists who were detained by Israeli ​forces in the West Bank ‌this week were released and repatriated ​on Saturday (October 24, 2026) morning, Italy’s ⁠Foreign Ministry said.The women were detained on Thursday (October 22) by Israeli police in Kiryat ‌Arba along with other international activists, while seeking to protect ‌Palestinian farmers during the ‌olive ⁠harvest in the Israel-occupied territory.Officials ⁠from the Italian embassy in Tel Aviv visited them at the airport on Friday ​evening and ‌said the activists appeared to be in good physical condition.Settlers have intimidated Palestinians harvesting their olives in ‌the occupied West Bank ​for decades, but violence has increased sharply this year, according ⁠to Palestinians, activists and the UN.Israeli rights group Yesh Din said ‌it had recorded more than 330 incidents of settler violence linked to this year’s olive harvest, which started in late September, including attacks, theft and damage to ‌trees.Israeli security services have said they ​take acts of violence and criminal activity very seriously.Olives are ⁠the backbone of Palestinian agriculture, ⁠a sector that accounts for around 8% of GDP and ‌more than 60,000 jobs, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Agriculture ​Ministry. Published - October 24, 2026 06:20 pm IST

Days ahead of close-fought Israeli elections, campaigns have gone into overdrive with poor-taste jibes and inflammatory attacks against candidates, sometimes crossing red lines.Fuelled in part by a boom in AI-generated images flooding social media, candidates and activists are seeking to portray their opponents as weak, untrustworthy or damaging for the country as they play on stereotypes and fears to sway public opinion.The electioneering has at times turned personal, with some candidates who lost loved ones in the wars following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack even having their bereavement dragged into the campaign.Ahead of Tuesday’s (October 27, 2026) vote, polls show Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc neck and neck with that of his main centre-right rival Gadi Eisenkot.On Wednesday (October 21, 2026) , Eisenkot posted a video on X wishing Netanyahu a happy 77th birthday that featured a slate of AI-generated characters including a Hamas member speaking from a tunnel.“What can we wish for the person who has been protecting us for 20 years?” the militant says, evoking theories that the premier has deliberately helped the Islamist movement stay in power in Gaza, charges vehemently denied by Netanyahu.Soon after, an AI depiction of Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei pops up, telling Netanyahu: “One more round without victory and I’ll make you a bomb as a present.”Mr. Netanyahu has also liberally weaponised AI-generated content against his rival.In July, he posted a video depicting Eisenkot rejecting a hug from a young man wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Israel unity” and instead embracing Arab-Israeli candidate Mansour Abbas.The clip sparked widespread outrage over claims the young man had been made to resemble Eisenkot’s son who was killed fighting in Gaza in 2023, something Netanyahu’s party denied.In an interview broadcast by Channel 13, Eisenkot said he had felt “deep contempt for Netanyahu and his entourage”…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel should prepare for international banking sanctions and suggested cryptocurrency could help the country get around them, just four days before the Knesset election. Speaking to Channel 10 on Friday, Netanyahu said Israel needed “an economy that can circumvent” sanctions, adding: “I’m working on that as well.” He said he had asked advisers to draw up a plan to use blockchain. The remarks follow Britain and 11 other Western countries announcing sanctions on goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, citing settler attacks on Palestinians and large-scale settlement expansion approved by Netanyahu’s government. Netanyahu framed the economic outlook as outside Israel’s control. He also said multibillion-dollar US weapons packages “won’t keep coming”, insisting “America has changed. Not because Israel has.”

They chant his name, they cheer and clap – and yet he is not the most dominant person in the room. Looming over the crowd that has gathered to hear Gadi Eisenkot, the former general who is the lead opposition challenger in Tuesday’s Israeli election, is a man who is not there. It is the man Eisenkot seeks to replace as prime minister, the man who first served in that role three decades ago and who has held it, on and off, for 19 of the past 30 years. It is Benjamin Netanyahu.Naturally, the warm-up speakers at this evening rally in the modest city of Modi’in, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, stress the virtues of Eisenkot, a son of working-class Moroccan Jews who rose through the ranks to become chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces and entered politics only four years ago. But every sentence might as well end with two words that go unspoken: unlike Bibi.Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff and head of the Yashar party, delivers an address on the campaign trail. In an obvious reference to Benjamin Netanyahu, he has called for a ‘country without lies’. Photograph: Ilia Yefimovich/AFP/Getty ImagesEven the name of Eisenkot’s party, Yashar, meaning straight or direct, carries the implied contrast with Netanyahu, who is regarded by friends and enemies alike as a maestro of the darkest political arts. When Eisenkot calls for “a country without lies”, when he calls for “responsibility and leading by example”, when he suggests US-style term limits for the role of prime minister, “because power corrupts”, everyone knows what – and who – he means.None of this comes with rhetorical fire or theatrical panache. But the lack of charisma serves only to emphasise that Eisenkot is every inch the un-Bibi. “I think that’s…

Mohammed Mokhber, an adviser to the Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, has said that "psychological warfare" and threats of war by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "betray desperation than power". In a post on X, Mokhber said: "Iran is aware of the enemy’s vulnerabilities. Surprise moves on the battlefield, along with its leverage in the oil and energy sectors, can shift the balance of power. "In the region, the nation that remains is the one that has lived there for thousands of years, and the Zionist regime can merely think about its own 'non-existence.'” 

The Colonisation and Wall Resistance Commission (CWRC) has documented 21 attacks by Israeli forces and settlers against Palestinian farmers across six governorates in a span of 12 hours on Friday, Wafa reported. The commission said that the attacks, between 6am and 6pm, included shootings, burning and cutting down of olive trees, theft of crops, and denying farmers access to their lands or forcing them to leave at gunpoint, as well as causing injuries to several farmers.  The CWRC said that escalating attacks on the olive harvest season were no longer limited to disrupting harvesting activities, but had come to directly target Palestinians' ability to remain on and cultivate their lands through a systematic pattern of violence, military intimidation, crop theft, tree destruction, and restrictions on access to agricultural land, all an integral part of Israel’s systematic policy of forced expulsion and settler-colonialism. The commission said that the coordination between settler attacks and the intervention of Israeli forces to protect the assailants or prevent farmers from accessing their lands demonstrated that these practices were not isolated incidents, but interconnected tools for seizing land and undermining the foundations of Palestinian agricultural life. It called on the international community to take concrete measures to halt the attacks and ensure protection for Palestinian farmers.  The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said the attacks included shootings and theft of crops. (AFP)

Israeli forces have raided at least 13 towns in the northern occupied West Bank, detaining dozens of Palestinians, Al Jazeera reported. The military raids targeted several cities and towns, including Nablus, Jenin, Tubas and Qalqilya. In the southern occupied West Bank, Israeli forces ordered hundreds of Palestinian families to forcibly evacuate their homes in the Ein Deir Bahha area of Hebron and its surroundings. Israeli troops also surrounded the home of one of the suspects in the shooting attack that killed two Israeli soldiers in Hebron, while carrying out raids in the city’s al-Jalda neighbourhood, according to Al Jazeera. Further east, Israeli forces entered Jericho and the nearby Aqabat Jabr refugee camp. 

Israeli forces have raided several areas in the occupied West Bank, including in the governorates of Bethlehem and Salfit, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. The raids were carried out while a major military operation was underway in Hebron, following the killing of two Israeli soldiers in a gunfight. In Bethlehem governorate, soldiers stormed the towns of Beit Fajjar and Tuqu as well as the town of Kafr ad-Dik in Salfit, according to Wafa. During the raid in Kafr ad-Dik, Israeli forces forced a family out of their home and used the property as a military barracks, Wafa reported, citing local sources.

Israeli forces were forcing Palestinian residents of Hebron in the occupied West Bank to evacuate their homes on foot, according to Quds News Network. Earlier, around 20 Israeli military vehicles stormed the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reported. The Israeli military said on Friday it had launched a “counterterrorism” operation in the Hebron area after two Israeli soldiers were killed in a gunfight near the city. In a statement, the military said it aims to locate and dismantle what it called “terrorist infrastructure and weapons.” It described the operation as “targeted and limited” to the area, and said it was likely to last several days. Israeli occupation forces continue to compel Palestinian residents to evacuate their homes on foot in the city of Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank. https://t.co/23sg3WTS8S — Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 23, 2026

Around 20 Israeli military vehicles stormed the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera reported, citing its correspondents on the ground. The Israeli military said on Friday it had launched a “counterterrorism” operation in the Hebron area after two Israeli soldiers were killed in a gunfight near the city. In a statement, the military said it aims to locate and dismantle what it called “terrorist infrastructure and weapons.” It described the operation as “targeted and limited” to the area, and said it was likely to last several days. Palestinian residents of Hebron would be allowed to leave only through “three designated exit points”, after being questioned and screened by Israeli soldiers, the military added. Israeli occupation forces storm Hebron, in the southern occupied West Bank, in large numbers, coinciding with the announcement of a military operation expected to last for days. https://t.co/KnPGtD9HVo — Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 23, 2026

Live Blog Update| War on Iran 23 October 2026 23:09 BST Two Palestinians were killed and several others wounded on Friday in an Israeli air strike in western Gaza City, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported. The strike hit near the al-Ramli family’s home in the al-Nasr neighbourhood. In a separate attack, an Israeli air strike near a restaurant in western Gaza City wounded several Palestinians.

When Israelis go to the polls on October 27, much of the world will be rooting for the defeat of the country’s longtime prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Under his nearly two decades of rule, Israel has become steadily more aggressive. It has abandoned any pretense of supporting a two-state solution; started constructing hundreds of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank; and, following Hamas’s cross-border attack on October 7, 2023, laid waste to the Gaza Strip, occupied parts of Lebanon and Syria, and launched war against Iran, its archnemesis. Meanwhile, its democratic institutions have faced endless attacks by Netanyahu and his allies, who have proposed laws that would, among other things, greatly curtail the power of Israel’s courts. Should he return to power for an unprecedented seventh term, many fret that the country will permanently transition into a rogue theocratic actor.To many voters, this election thus marks a crucial turning point in Israeli domestic policy. The prime minister’s main political opponent, former Israel Defense Forces Chief Gadi Eisenkot, holds a more liberal worldview than his competitor. He supports an independent judiciary, a free press, and a professional civil service. Should he win, he will likely try to reverse Netanyahu’s efforts to curtail each institution’s independence.But an Eisenkot victory is unlikely to change Israel’s foreign policy or approach to the Palestinians. Almost all of Israel’s Jewish political parties, Eisenkot’s included, are opposed to Palestinian statehood, not just Netanyahu’s Likud. They all believe that Israel’s brutal war on Gaza was morally just and practically necessary. And almost all of them think that Israel was right to attack Iran and to establish and create what its government and military call “security zones”—occupied territory—in Lebanon and Syria. In fact, the only real disagreement between Eisenkot and Netanyahu on matters of security is whether the…