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Morning Edition · Monday, September 21, 2026Published at 1:16 AM EDT · New York
A new party led by a former military chief is competing with Likud before Israel's October election
Gadi Eisenkot's Yashar has led several polls, while Netanyahu says he intends to form a broad national government and points to the American-brokered agreement with Lebanon.
Yashar, the party founded by Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israeli military who served in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war cabinet and then criticised his conduct of the war, has led several opinion polls before the October 27 election. Eisenkot argues for what he calls strategic rather than open-ended wars, and agrees with Netanyahu on several questions, including policy towards Iran.
The gap has narrowed. Across five recent surveys Yashar averaged 22.2 seats against 21.2 for Likud, and at least one television poll has shown the pro-Netanyahu bloc slightly ahead without giving him a clear path to a Knesset majority.
Netanyahu says he plans to form a broad national government after the vote and describes the United States-brokered agreement with Lebanon as a historic achievement that weakened Iran and Hezbollah. Iranian officials reject that framing and present the regional arrangements as temporary and conditional on the lifting of the naval blockade.
For markets the relevant point is not which bloc wins but how similar the candidates are on the security questions that move risk premiums. Both leading figures support a hard line on Iran, and neither has proposed a change to the policy that produced the current standoff in the Gulf. An Israeli election is therefore unlikely to change the policy driving the Hormuz closure and the resulting oil price premium.
Part of a tracked trend
Fragile US-Iran Detente
The US-Iran settlement is a managed, reversible arrangement rather than a durable peace, so repeated rounds of brinkmanship and renegotiation will keep regional risk live and intermittently price back into energy markets.
Veracity: Corroborated
76/100- If true, who benefits
Eisenkot's campaign gains from any framing that places Yashar in front, and Netanyahu gains from attributing the Lebanon arrangement to his own government during the campaign.
- The nuance
Polling is genuinely split rather than settled, with Channel 12 giving Yashar 25 seats to Likud's 21 while an i24NEWS and Direct Polls survey put Likud ahead at 27, and the bloc arithmetic turns on whether Eisenkot would rely on Arab parties, a question he has not resolved publicly.
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What this means
Israeli asset prices, the shekel and regional risk premiums respond to the security posture rather than to the party label, and both leading candidates hold similar positions on Iran, so the election is unlikely to shift the energy risk premium in either direction. The variable that would shift it is the Qatar-mediated negotiation over the blockade and Iran's frozen funds, where Israel is a participant rather than the decision-maker. A fragmented Knesset that cannot form a government quickly is the outcome that matters most, because a caretaker administration would delay both the budget and any decision on the Lebanon arrangement.
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