Israel Votes as Ex-Army Chief Eisenkot's Yashar Party Narrowly Leads Netanyahu's Likud in Polls

Israelis vote on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, in an election pitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest-serving premier, against Gadi Eisenkot, a retired lieutenant general who leads the year-old centrist Yashar party. Polls show Yashar narrowly ahead of Netanyahu's Likud, with one projection giving it 20 of the 120 parliamentary seats. Either side needs a 61-seat majority to form a coalition. Eisenkot was born in Tiberias to Moroccan immigrants, grew up in Eilat, served in the Golani Brigade and was military chief of staff from 2015 to 2019. He criticized Netanyahu's strategy months after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack. Both men have vowed to end Hamas rule and both back Donald Trump's peace plan, though neither has laid out a clear plan for Gaza, where nearly 75,000 people have been killed and nearly a million are displaced. In Sderot, a kilometer from the Gaza border, Likud won over 40% of the vote in 2022, against 23% nationwide.

Fox News, on the right, frames the race as a high-stakes contest and leads with Eisenkot's résumé and rise as the leading challenger. It relies on experts, including journalist Yossi Melman, who called him brave and humble, and it centers coalition arithmetic. The Guardian, on the left, leads with Gaza instead. It quotes displaced Palestinian Sami Abu Rumi, says the humanitarian catastrophe is largely absent from the campaign, and describes both leaders' approaches as similar. Both sides agree that Eisenkot's Yashar leads polls and that both main camps want Hamas removed. They differ in whose voices they use, with an Israeli expert versus a Palestinian civilian, and in emphasis: Fox omits Gaza casualty figures, while the Guardian gives little space to Eisenkot's biography. Deutsche Welle and The Hindu add separate angles: his Moroccan-heritage appeal in Sderot, and his Dahiya doctrine record.