Eisenkot Vows to End Hamas Rule as Group Rearms in Gaza

Gadi Eisenkot stood at the Gaza border on Thursday and promised to end Hamas rule within 18 months of becoming prime minister—a pledge no Israeli leader has managed to keep. The Yashar party leader and former IDF chief of staff spoke ahead of the October 27 elections.

“I pledge that within 18 months of taking office as prime minister, Hamas will no longer rule the Gaza Strip. We will destroy Hamas’ military wing,” he said.

The Security Picture

Eisenkot based his promise on a threat assessment. Intelligence reports and senior security officials, he said, indicate Hamas is “restoring its military capabilities, reestablishing itself in the Gaza Strip, and attempting to carry out terrorist acts against us.” That’s the heart of the matter. More than three years after the October 7 massacre, the group behind it is rebuilding.

He described two possible routes. One would follow President Trump’s framework, which Netanyahu’s government accepted. The other would draw on Israel’s military and operational capabilities. Either way, Eisenkot said, he’d develop a plan to eliminate Hamas with the heads of the defense establishment, present it to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, and run it through a restored National Security Council.

Eisenkot pointed to his own record. He rose through the Golani infantry brigade, served as OC Northern Command, and was chief of staff from 2015 to 2019. That tenure put him at the center of Israel’s confrontation with Iranian forces and their allies in Syria. He said his experience, alongside time in the Mossad and other security bodies, left him confident he could dismantle Hamas.

A Contest Over Who Can Deliver

Eisenkot directly attacked the prime minister. “Let it be clear: as long as Benjamin Netanyahu is in power, Hamas will remain in power,” he said, accusing Netanyahu of lacking strategic military objectives. “There is a way to prevent the next disaster, if we make courageous decisions and formulate a national strategy.”

Likud responded with a question about coalition math: “How would you destroy Hamas without getting permission from your partners, Mansour [Abbas] and [Ahmed] Tibi?” The statement suggested a government with Arab parties would block an operation in Gaza. The record is mixed. Abbas’s Ra’am joined a coalition that carried out strikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including an IDF operation against Hamas tunnels days after the coalition formed in June 2021, and during the 2022 Operation Breaking Dawn.

Eisenkot said he’s repeatedly ruled out Abbas or Tibi’s Joint List joining his coalition, and told The Jerusalem Post he doesn’t consider them viable partners. “In the basic guidelines of the next government, it will be written that whoever does not accept that Hamas is a terrorist organization, that it needs to be dismantled and destroyed, will not be a partner in the next government,” he said. “And therefore I do not see an Arab party that accepts my principles.”

His reply to Likud was blunt. “For 17 years, Netanyahu and Likud have misled Israel’s citizens and strengthened Hamas.” He added: “If you had focused a little more on doing your job and a little less on drafting talking points, perhaps October 7 could have been prevented. In 12 days, you’re going home.”

Attacks From the Right

Likud wasn’t the only source of criticism. People of Israel leader Ofer Winter said Eisenkot, as chief of staff, “embodied the ‘conzeptzia (military mentality of containment),’ pushed for containment and negotiated arrangements, and called for the war to stop before we entered Rafah.” Winter argued that Eisenkot appointed Yair Golan, Aharon Haliva and Herzi Halevi, and that a government led by Eisenkot and Golan couldn’t achieve decisive victory.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit said Eisenkot, while in the cabinet, demanded a complete halt to the war, a full withdrawal from Gaza and the release of all terrorists from Israeli prisons. Ben-Gvir said Eisenkot opposed taking Rafah, entering the Philadelphi Corridor and taking the security zone in Lebanon.

Accountability and Conscription

Eisenkot also reaffirmed his pledge to establish a State Commission of Inquiry into government failures on October 7 within 150 days of a new government’s formation. More than three years after the massacre, no probe has taken place, the source said, as the political echelon repeatedly blocked the commission. Netanyahu had spoken against judicial appointments being part of the investigation. Eisenkot also vowed that a government he leads would pass a conscription law to draft haredim into the IDF.

Why This Matters: The campaign is turning on one security question: who can actually end Hamas’s rule in Gaza? Israelis are weighing a rival bloc’s accusations of containment against a sitting prime minister’s record. Hamas is reportedly rebuilding, and it has never accepted Israel’s existence. Whichever coalition emerges will inherit a group that’s regrouping while a Trump-backed framework remains unfulfilled. Eisenkot’s 18-month promise sets a public benchmark, and his ban on partners who won’t call Hamas a terrorist organization shapes who can govern.