Many hoped that the catastrophe of October 7 would usher in a new era in Israeli politics, as a nation hurt, angry, and demoralized by the systemic failures of its political and military leaders would demand something different.
After all, it was the old system – the old way of thinking, of governing, of communicating – that contributed to the conceptual blindness that left the country unprepared and to the deep divisions that rendered it so ripe for attack.
Gadi Eisenkot’s decision on Monday to leave Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party is a reflection of the old Israeli politics, not the fresh start many were hoping for.
Why the old politics? Because it’s the same familiar story: Competition at the top leads those who come up short to seek other frameworks where they can be number one.
The list of such moves is long: David Levy left the Likud in 1996 to form his own party after losing to Benjamin Netanyahu in that year’s primaries. Ehud Barak left Labor in 2011 to create a new party and remain defense minister in Netanyahu’s government. Tzipi Livni left Kadima in 2012 to form Hatnua after losing the party leadership to Shaul Mofaz.
And the list goes on and on, rendering this nothing less than a phenomenon, one reflecting the personalization of Israeli politics and the ambitions of politicians who prefer leading to following.
Despite how Eisenkot’s move may be spun – he says it was driven by dissatisfaction over how the party planned to hold its first primary; Gantz attributes it to “ideological differences” – the outcome is the same: A senior politician who couldn’t rise to the top in one party decides to jump to another.
It would be nice to take Gantz at his word and believe this is a matter of ideology. But for the average voter, the differences between the two men are hardly apparent.
The move also highlights one of the core problems plaguing the Israeli political system: the weakening of broad-based parties that offer clear ideological choices, such as Labor and Likud once did, and the rise of smaller parties built around dominant personalities.
An undemocratic political system
These parties tend not to be democratic.
Avigdor Liberman runs Yisrael Beytenu with an iron grip, and there has never been any real internal competition there. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid has only held one primary since its founding in 2012, and that was not until March 2024. Gantz’s party has never held a primary.
And it’s hard to imagine that the new party Naftali Bennett is forming will be any different. He will likely serve as chairman with broad powers to handpick the list.
While that setup may serve the party leader well, it doesn’t serve the system. It weakens and dilutes democracy by reducing transparency, participation, competition, and accountability.
Without real primaries, parties risk becoming vehicles for the ambitions of a single individual.
The trend in Israel toward smaller personality-based parties rather than larger ideological ones has not led to a healthier or more effective system. If anything, the opposite is true. It has created a more fractured landscape, making it harder to build coalitions or govern effectively, as Israel’s experience of five elections in three and a half years, from 2019 to 2022, makes painfully clear.
The bottom line? Eisenkot’s departure from one centrist party to join another will likely make little real difference. He might pull a couple of seats away from Gantz and bring them to whatever party he joins next, but that would just be rearranging the furniture within the same political camp, not moving voters from one camp to the other.
If there’s one small silver lining in this otherwise uninspiring move, it’s this: The Gantz–Eisenkot split lacked the usual acrimony that often accompanies these kinds of political breakups. The two men – both former IDF chiefs of staff – have known each other for years and share mutual respect. The civility with which they dealt with and talked about one another, even as their political alliance was breaking apart, is perhaps the one good takeaway from this episode and sets a good public example.
But beyond that, this is just more of the same old politics at a time when Israel is thirsting for something fresh and new.