With less than four months before Israel's 27 October general election, the new centrist party Yashar, led by former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, has overtaken Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud in multiple opinion polls. Surveys published by Channel 12 show Yashar winning 23–24 Knesset seats against Likud's 22, while Eisenkot holds a 43-to-34 percent advantage over Netanyahu when voters are asked who is most suitable to lead the country. Neither the Netanyahu-aligned bloc of right-wing, ultra-Orthodox and settler parties nor the opposition camp under Eisenkot currently commands the 61 seats required to form a government, leaving the two Arab-majority parties, each projected to win five seats, as potential kingmakers.

A former communications adviser to Netanyahu, Avi Bushinsky, told Israeli radio that the prime minister's overriding objective is to prevent the opposition from reaching a majority, aiming instead for a political tie that would force fresh elections while he remains at the head of a transitional government. According to Bushinsky, such a deadlock would allow Netanyahu to govern without a sitting Knesset to constrain him and would shield him from the corruption trial that, Israeli analysts note, could be imperilled by a change of power. Netanyahu has in recent days made concessions to coalition partners, a move described in Swedish press commentary as a sign of panic.

Eisenkot's challenge draws much of its force from his biography. The son of Moroccan immigrants, he is positioned to become Israel's first prime minister of Mizrahi origin, directly contesting a voter base that has underpinned Likud's electoral dominance since the 1970s. His son Gal and a nephew were killed fighting in Gaza, a sacrifice that Israeli media contrast with the fact that Netanyahu's adult sons have not been called up. An attempt by Netanyahu's inner circle to mock Eisenkot's accented English backfired, according to analysts in Israel, because it revived perceptions of Ashkenazi condescension toward Jews of North African descent and risked alienating the very voters Likud needs to retain.

On policy, Eisenkot has criticised Netanyahu for what he describes as overly rapid concessions to US demands for a Lebanon ceasefire, while himself describing calls for a Palestinian state as "out of context." He is viewed in Israeli commentary as a centrist open to a coalition with left-wing parties and supportive of drafting both Arab citizens and ultra-Orthodox Jews. The election, the first since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, is scheduled to be held by late October, though no precise date has been set. The campaign is expected to intensify around the enlistment question and the legacy of the security collapse, with the final outcome likely to hinge on whether Eisenkot can convert his polling lead into a parliamentary majority or whether Netanyahu succeeds in engineering the stalemate his former adviser described.