Why Gadi Eisenkot should support Palestinian elections without promising statehood - opinion

I hope that Gadi Eisenkot will be Israel’s next prime minister, even if I am not voting for him. It disturbs me that he refuses to say that he will deal differently with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict than how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has dealt with it since 2009.

I recognize that the trauma of October 7 has changed Israeli society profoundly. But we should also understand that Hamas’s massacre shattered assumptions about security, deterrence, and the possibility of simply containing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rather than confronting the reality that this conflict cannot be managed and must be resolved, Israeli politics has moved sharply toward the Right and focuses solely on increased military strength as a solution and distrust of Palestinian intentions.

It is therefore understandable that politicians competing for the Israeli mainstream are cautious when talking about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Words such as “Palestinian state” and even “two-state solution” have become politically explosive for many Israelis. And political leaders all too often follow public opinion rather than shaping it.

But avoiding the need to resolve the conflict does not eliminate it.

Netanyahu’s political strategy for many years was based on determined opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. But preventing Palestinian statehood did not erase the Palestinian aspiration for freedom and self-determination. Three years of devastating war have not made that aspiration disappear. If anything, the issue of Palestinian self-determination has become even more central to the conflict.

Nor has the idea of two states disappeared internationally. Despite profound disagreements over how such an outcome could be achieved, broad international support remains for a negotiated future in which Israel and a Palestinian state exist alongside one another. In September 2026, the vast majority of countries, including Britain, France, Canada, and more than 100 other countries, again publicly reaffirmed support for a two-state solution.

Eisenkot has built much of his public identity around responsibility, sober judgment, and learning lessons from failure. That makes the question of what comes next especially important.

The lesson that Israel must learn should therefore be larger than the failure to “manage” the conflict. The Palestinian national question cannot simply be wished away. Israel cannot suppress Palestinian aspirations, resist them, or postpone dealing with them.

And there is something happening on the Palestinian side that Israelis are barely discussing. Israelis will vote for a new Knesset on October 27. Palestinian legislative elections are scheduled for November 28 – almost exactly one month later.

New Palestinian political lists are entering the process, including representatives of a generation that has never before had the opportunity to vote in a national Palestinian election. What Israel says – or does not say – during this period will inevitably form part of the environment in which Palestinians make that decision.

Why it's important for Israel to support Palestinian elections

There is a remarkably simple message that an Israeli leader could convey without promising a Palestinian state, accepting a particular negotiating formula, or prejudging the outcome of future negotiations.

It is this: If the Palestinian people elect leaders who are sincerely committed to achieving genuine peace between the Palestinian people and the people of Israel, they will find a partner for peace in Israel.

That sentence should not be controversial. It does not ask Israelis to forget October 7. It does not ask them to trust Hamas. It does not prescribe borders, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, or security arrangements. It does not even require Eisenkot, during an Israeli election campaign, to use the words “two states.”

It simply tells Palestinians that political choices matter. That message could have significance far beyond Israeli domestic politics.

Imagine being a young Palestinian who has never voted in a national election. You have grown up watching negotiations fail, settlements expand, violence recur, and Israeli governments increasingly argue that there is no Palestinian partner. You are now being asked to choose among political movements offering very different visions of the Palestinian future.

One of the central questions confronting such a voter is obvious: Does choosing a peaceful political path actually lead anywhere?

If the answer coming from Israel is silence – if Palestinians conclude that Israel will reject them regardless of whom they elect or what policies those leaders adopt – then advocates of diplomacy have a much harder argument to make. But if a major Israeli leader says clearly that Palestinians who choose leaders committed to genuine peace will encounter an Israeli partner, the political equation changes.

It does not guarantee peace. Nothing could. But it restores the essential principle upon which diplomacy depends: Political choices can produce political consequences.

Such a statement could also resonate internationally. Israel today faces an extraordinarily difficult diplomatic environment. Criticism of Israeli policy has intensified across many countries, international institutions, and younger generations abroad. Whatever Israelis believe about the fairness or motivations of that criticism, the deterioration of Israel’s international standing is a strategic issue that cannot be dismissed.

An Israeli leader saying that Israel remains prepared to pursue genuine peace with genuinely peaceful Palestinian leadership would communicate something important to the world as well: Israel has not abandoned the search for a political future beyond permanent war.

Most importantly, however, this should not be about public relations. It should be about strategy. Israel cannot determine whom Palestinians elect. Nor should it try. But Israeli leaders should understand that what they say influences the Palestinian political debate just as Palestinian rhetoric influences Israelis.

For decades, Israelis have asked a legitimate question: Where is the Palestinian partner? Palestinians have increasingly begun asking the mirror-image question: If we choose a different path, will there be an Israeli partner?

The elections of October and November 2026 provide an unusual moment when both societies will be making political choices almost simultaneously. There is no certainty about what either electorate will decide. But there is an opportunity to establish one principle before those choices are made.

If Palestinians choose leaders genuinely committed to peace with Israel, Israel should be prepared to meet them. That is not a peace agreement. It is not a concession. It is an invitation to choose a different future. And sometimes history begins with something as simple as one sentence.