Israeli Press
Channel 13's poll puts Eisenkot two seats ahead of Netanyahu's Likud
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Ten weeks before Israelis vote, a television poll has the man who commanded their army leading the man who has governed them for most of two decades.
Channel 13's survey, published on Wednesday night and reported by the Israeli daily Maariv, gives Gadi Eisenkot's list 23 seats and Likud 21. On the question of who should be prime minister, Eisenkot takes 47 percent against Benjamin Netanyahu's 34.
In the paper's account of the broadcast, the opposition bloc reaches 60 seats once the lists of Chili Tropper and Yoaz Hendel are counted in — one short of a Knesset majority, and short in the way that has decided every recent Israeli election.
The poll also tests a merger, and finds it costs him: a joint Eisenkot–Tropper slate polls 22, a seat below Eisenkot's list standing alone.
Sixty is the number Palestinian readers should hold. The seats that would carry any anti-Netanyahu government past it belong to the Arab lists, whose voters are Palestinian citizens of Israel — the bloc that both camps need and neither will seat.
Eisenkot is not a change of direction on Palestinian questions. He was chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, the years of the Great March of Return, and he sat in the war cabinet until he resigned from it in June 2024.
Netanyahu retains 90 percent support among voters of his own coalition, the same poll found. His problem in it is arithmetic, not loyalty.
