Netanyahu Opens Direct Campaign Assault on Eisenkot Over Rafah and Philadelphi

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a Saturday night press conference on June 27, ostensibly called to defend the new US-brokered Lebanon framework, to launch his first direct campaign attack on former IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, the Yashar party leader now narrowly leading Likud in head-to-head premiership polls. Netanyahu argued that Eisenkot and his allies had opposed entering Rafah, seizing the Philadelphi Corridor, the pager operation, the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah, and the expanded Hezbollah campaign that destroyed roughly 90 percent of its missile stockpile, decisions Netanyahu credits with reshaping the post-October 7 battlefield. Pairing the broadside with a Begin-style "no more civil war" pitch for a broad national government, the premier sought to win back center-right voters who drifted to Eisenkot, Naftali Bennett, and Avigdor Lieberman. Eisenkot called Netanyahu "a prime minister who blindly led to a historic low" who invests his energy in division, incitement, and encouraging draft evasion.