Gadi Eisenkot unveils agenda to reverse Netanyahu’s policies

This is Apropos. Benjamin Netanyahu is being warned not to deploy IDF security forces without an immediate threat amid ongoing reports that the Israeli leader is seeking to renew military action against Iran. After being tasked with forming a new government, Gadi Eisenkot is also moving swiftly to try to reverse many of Netanyahu's most contentious policies. With caretaker prime minister's opponents now controlling a solid majority in parliament, the new Knesset can enact legislation even before a coalition is formed, as August Atkinson reports. Two days after ex-military chief Gadi Eisenkot was tasked with forming a government in Israel, the country's 120 newly elected lawmakers were sworn into the Knesset. Yes. In this complex situation, I'm committed to forming a national emergency government as quickly as possible. Whether Eisenkot can form a government remains uncertain. But the new Knesset can already pass legislation. And shortly after the swearing-in ceremony, Eisenkot's Yeshar party and its allies introduced a series of bills aimed at reversing key policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. At the heart of the proposals is a state commission of inquiry into the October 7th Hamas-led attack. It would investigate the intelligence and security failures that allowed the assault to happen and examine Netanyahu's own responsibility. The prime minister has faced allegations that he received warnings ahead of the attack but failed to act. Allegations he denies. Another bill would impose a term limit on prime ministers, a move that could prevent Netanyahu from returning to power. Other. Other proposals seek to reverse Netanyahu's controversial judicial overhaul. They would repeal laws weakening the independence of the judiciary and the powers of the Attorney General, as well as measures giving the government greater control over the media. The proposed changes address issues that have brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis onto the streets in recent years, protesting against the erosion of judicial independence and demanding accountability for the failures of October 7th. For more, we're joined now by Rina Bassist, an Israeli journalist who heads Al Monitor's Israel Pulse. Thanks so much for being with us on the programme, Rina. Gadi Eisenkot, he's already giving us an indication about what his priorities might be if he does succeed in forming the next government. But there have been stormy scenes in the Knesset this week. Does that bode ill for his chances of putting a lasting coalition in place, do you think? Or is this just par for the course? Absolutely. It's not going to be easy. First of all, he has Benjamin Netanyahu, and it's rather clear now that if ever the Prime Minister was trying to persuade Gadi Eisenkot to put together a unity government, after all of what you described, well, stormy incidents and stormy events at the Knesset, this is more or less off the table. I mean, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had very harsh words against the Arab minority, 20% of Israel's population and so on, and it was very badly received by many in the opposition. That's one thing. Now, another thing is, of course, Gadi Eisenkot was very clear about his strategy. He's not going to wait until the government is formed. To advance his different priorities, and it's exactly because of that. Because he knows, and we've seen all of these events, he knows it's going to take time. The government won't be established in a matter of a day or two, and he has 42 days to do it. And we can imagine that the government will be established only at the end of that period. So until we see this government... And because of this very difficult political atmosphere that we have seen in the Knesset in the past few days, Gadi Eisenkot is not waiting. We have already seen the establishment of the principal committees that should allow the Knesset to function, to operate. And he's going to use these committees. And the fact that The new Knesset, the new Israeli parliament was sworn in to start advancing legislations. There were many things he promised during the electoral campaign. He's going to start to implement it right away. And how genuine is that fury that we've seen coming from Netanyahu towards the Arab list? Did he not try and woo the Ra'am Party back in 2019 and again in 2021 himself? And as for the joint list, it is opposed to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state. So what kind of compromises is it going to be seeking from Gadi Eisenkot to go into government with him? So let's start with Benjamin Netanyahu, and you are absolutely right. He himself tried negotiating at the time the entry of Ra'am and instead of Mansour Abbas into his coalition. That's a fact. He cannot deny it. And this is what many in the Israeli opposition are saying now, that his campaign, all of this conspiracy theory and the accusations as if... Ra'am and the Joint List are supporting a terror which are completely baseless. It's only in the service of his current political interests. And it was very interesting what Mansour Abbas, the head of Ra'am, said today. He's saying, look at the situation. We have a prime minister who has been on trial now from 2020, six years now. He's accused of bribery and breach of trust, and he's trying to accuse us, the Arab citizens, of not being loyal to the country. It's absurd. So we are in this situation. That's on Netanyahu's side. And for your second question, you were asking about the joint list, and here we have A political problem, because Gadi Eisenkot might, under certain circumstances, if he does not work out, he will try first to put a coalition together with the ultra-Orthodox. But let's say it's not working out. If it's not working out, he will try maybe to get the support of Raam, which has already said, you will get our support, no conditions attached. So, once he decides that he wants to take that path, it would be an easy route to take. He would have to convince his coalition partners, and the difficult one to convince would be, of course, Avigdor Lieberman. But this problem of convincing his partners to accept the exterior support of an Arab party You can multiply it by 10 or 100 or 1,000 when it comes to the Arab joint list. I think that neither Avigdor Lieberman nor the other coalition partners, if it's Naftali Bennett and perhaps even Yair Lapid, are not going to go with it. For them, it's a complete non-starter to have the Arab Joint List supporting, even from exterior, supporting a minority government, which means that, yeah, it puts Gadi Eisenkot in a complicated situation because having just Ram on his side does not bring the opposition bloc into the 61. The Knesset seats that he needs, a clear majority in the Knesset of 120. So he's facing a real problem over there on his quest to form a stable government. And separately, Gadi Eisenkot also warning Netanyahu again about issuing illegal orders to the military, this presumably relating to Iran. It comes, of course, not so long after Donald Trump announcing that billions of dollars in aid would be halted. To Israel, further examples of, you know, the country becoming even more isolated on the international stage. What's the impact been of all of that in Israel? Well, first of all, this issue of Netanyahu using the Iranian threat to fortify his political status, and this image of Mr. Security. This has been an issue well before the October 27 elections, and at the time, in the weeks before the elections, Gadi Eisenkot and other leaders of the opposition, they warned Netanyahu. They said, you do not have the right to embark on any kind of a military adventure. Just to become the sort of a hero and to try to rally everybody around you and perhaps even at the time they were suspecting that he might use a new war in Iran in order to delay the elections. But of course, Netanyahu needed for such a move, he needed the green light of President Donald Trump and he didn't get it. So that was off the table. But it seems that... The question of Iran is back, at a certain level, on the table again, and again, Gadi Eisenkot is warning the Prime Minister, he's saying, we are watching you, you can't just decide to embark on a military operation just to stay in power, just to gain support. Just to try to force us, the other Zionist opposition parties, to agree to be in a unity government with you, because Netanyahu knows that that's his only option to stay prime minister. So this is where we stand now. And just finally, Rina, changing political landscape, obviously also in the U.S., how might that affect U.S. policy towards Israel more broadly and Israeli policy towards Gaza? Listen, there are a lot of question marks about, since we don't know, first of all, which government we are going to have in the coming year, but from the little that the Eisenkot has said in the past few months, in the past few weeks, it seems that he will I would respect the 20-point peace plan of... of President Donald Trump, something that Prime Minister Netanyahu pledged to do. He did accept it officially, but of course on the ground it's not happening. Netanyahu has prevented the technocrat, the Palestinian technocrat, body to enter into the Gaza Strip to start the rehabilitation. The Israeli army is obviously still there and I s not withdrawn rawn at least not as much. So, we have on the one hand a prime minister who pledged that he would accept that he would go along with the American plan, but he didn't do it in reality, and this would be the test of Gadi Eisenkot. How far will he go? And Gadi Eisenkot has said on several occasions that he's committed to repairing Israel's very damaged relations with Washington. The fact that Netanyahu always chose this. One-sided party, Republican Party approach and ditch the bipartisan, the traditional Israeli bipartisan. A policy, Gadi Eisenkot said that he's going to take another pass to rehabilitate these ties. And it's evident, I think, to everybody that trying to rehabilitate Israel's ties with the United States, it goes to implementing President Trump's Gaza plan. Rina, thanks so much for being with us on the program. We'll have to leave it there for now. That is Rina Bassist, an Israeli journalist heading up Al Monitor's Israel Pulse. Thank you.