Gadi Eisenkot during his final election campaign rally in Tel Aviv, on Oct. 25.
For months, Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has pitched himself as a modest alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, campaigning more on reliability than a markedly different approach to the country’s myriad security challenges.
But in the final days of the election campaign, the question of Iran – and of Israel’s future approach to it – is widening the policy gap between the two. Netanyahu is pledging to topple Tehran’s regime – with US President Donald Trump backing him to “finish the job” – casting himself at a rally last week as the only leader capable of waging such an existential battle.