Who will bring peace to West Asia: Benjamin Netanyahu or Gadi Eisenkot? | The Verdict

Who will bring peace to West Asia? Benjamin Netanyahu or Gadi Eisenkot? Prime Minister Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival, but removing him will not automatically change Israel’s strategic direction.

For Netanyahu, the pitch has been security, strength and survival.

This election result will reflect what Israelis inside and outside the country think of his war against Hamas and Iran. His supporters say it is PM Netanyahu who got the entire top Hamas and Hezbollah leadership killed after October 7, something that no other Israeli leader has been able to do.

But the counter-argument to this is that if security is Netanyahu’s strongest claim, the same October 7 shouldn’t have happened in the first place. The Hamas attack exposed a catastrophic intelligence and security failure. The subsequent wars have not just caused an enormous human cost, but have deepened Israel’s difficulties globally.

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So will Gadi Eisenkot bring in the much-needed peace in West Asia?

Well, he is not exactly a peace candidate. He favours preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and has promised to finish off Hamas in 18 months. So his foreign policy is not going to be drastically different from what Netanyahu has done so far.

That leaves us with the central point of this election: Israeli citizens.

What do they want?

All of them want one thing: peace. But not all of them have the same approach. For some, Netanyahu will lead them to permanent peace. For others, he is a war criminal.

Neither has a guaranteed path to victory. But they can ensure that genuine peace becomes the vantage point from which they govern the next four years. But the question is, is peace even a priority for any candidate?