从纸面上看，加迪·艾森科特似乎是以色列右翼的理想领导人。他远离特拉维夫的精英阶层，在红海城市埃拉特长大，那里位于以色列的最南端。他在军队中服役了四十多年，最初是戈拉尼旅的一名步兵，而这支部队正是以色列军队中坚韧、来自工人阶级的核心力量。此外，他还是米兹拉希犹太人：他的家族并非来自欧洲，而是从摩洛哥移民到以色列的。
On paper, Gadi Eisenkot seems like an ideal leader for Israel’s right wing. He grew up far from the Tel Aviv establishment, in the Red Sea town of Eilat, at the country’s southern tip. He spent more than four decades in uniform, starting as an infantryman in the Golani Brigade, the army’s gritty, working-class core. And he is Mizrahi: His family came to Israel not from Europe but from Morocco.
他的父亲将原本带有欧洲风味的家族姓氏“Azancot”改为中文发音的姓氏，而“Azancot”在柏柏尔语中意为“羚羊”。利库德集团长期以来一直将这类个人背景视为自己的象征。但艾森科特并非本雅明·内塔尼亚胡的预定继承人。相反，这位面容稚气、说话温和的军人，却是总理最危险的政敌。
His father adapted the European-sounding family name from Azancot, a Berber word meaning “gazelle.”The Likud party has long claimed just this sort of biography for its own. But Eisenkot is not Benjamin Netanyahu’s heir apparent. Rather, this soft-spoken military man with a boyish face is the prime minister’s most dangerous political enemy.
一年前，这一头衔本应属于本尼·甘茨——这位前军队总司令曾被支持者视为下一位伊扎克·拉宾。艾森科特与甘茨因一系列分歧决裂，其中许多分歧都涉及内塔尼亚胡，并创立了自己的政党“亚沙尔”（Yashar），在希伯来语中意为“正直”。令甚至他最亲近的助手都感到惊讶的是，艾森科特如今在民意调查中领先，而甘茨的政党在几乎所有预测中都无法达到选举门槛。
A year ago, that distinction would have belonged to Benny Gantz, the former army chief whom admirers once cast as the next Yitzhak Rabin. Eisenkot broke with Gantz over an array of disagreements, including many about Netanyahu, and founded his own party, called Yashar—Hebrew for “straight,” as in honest. To the surprise of even his closest aides, Eisenkot now leads the polls, and Gantz’s party fails to clear the electoral threshold in almost every projection.
然而，在以色列，民意调查领先与成为总理是两件截然不同的事情。以色列人并非直接投票选出总理，而是投票给各个政党。以色列议会共有120个席位，谁能组建起61个席位的联合政府，谁就能执政。这听起来似乎可行，但自2023年10月7日以来，这几乎变得不可能。
In Israel, however, leading the polls and becoming prime minister are two very different things. Israelis don’t vote for a prime minister. They vote for parties. The Knesset has 120 seats, and whoever can assemble a coalition of 61 governs. That sounds manageable, but since October 7, 2023, it has become nearly impossible.
以色列多线作战的不均衡负担使得数学问题变得复杂。过去三年，以色列国防军几乎在每一条战线上作战，似乎没有尽头——在加沙、约旦河西岸、黎巴嫩、叙利亚、伊朗。军队一次又一次地征召预备役人员，每次数月。许多人失去了工作、企业和婚姻。一些预备役人员自杀。这些牺牲迫使全国就超正统派（即哈雷迪）免于服兵役的问题进行反思。以色列人普遍希望看到超正统派年轻男子分担军事负担。但超正统派政党拒绝这一点，而内塔尼亚胡的联盟依赖于他们。
The math has been complicated by the unequal burdens of Israel’s multifront war. For the past three years, the Israel Defense Forces have been fighting on virtually every front, seemingly without end—in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran. The military has called up reservists again and again, for months at a time. Many have lost jobs, businesses, and marriages. Some reservists took their own life. Such sacrifices have forced a national reckoning with the exemption of the ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, from military service. Israelis overwhelmingly want to see ultra-Orthodox young men share the military load. But the ultra-Orthodox parties refuse this, and Netanyahu’s coalition depends on them.
对艾森科特而言，这一问题已经变得个人化。他的儿子之一加尔被征召服役，并在加沙执行任务时牺牲，任务是营救一名被扣押的遇难者。此后，艾森科特决定在这一问题上更加积极主动。他和几乎所有其他反对派领袖都承诺不与超正统派政党合作执政。使问题复杂化的是，许多同样的领袖，包括艾森科特，也排除了自10月7日起与以色列阿拉伯政党合作执政——尽管哈马斯武装分子当天杀害并绑架了阿拉伯公民，而阿拉伯以色列籍的急救人员和急救技术员冒着生命危险救治和疏散了许多受害者。一些政党领袖规定，他们只会与其社区成员服役的政党合作。
For Eisenkot, the issue has become personal. One of his sons, Gal, was called up for duty and died on a mission in Gaza to extract one of the dead hostages. After that, Eisenkot decided that he needed to be more active on the matter of the Haredi exemption. He and nearly every other opposition leader have pledged not to govern with the ultra-Orthodox parties. Complicating matters, many of the same leaders, including Eisenkot, have also ruled out governing with Israel’s Arab parties since October 7—even though Hamas gunmen murdered and kidnapped Arab citizens that day, and Arab Israeli paramedics and EMTs risked their lives to treat and evacuate many victims. Some party leaders have stipulated that they will partner only with parties whose communities serve in the army.
这一立场可能是艾森科特与内塔尼亚胡工作之间唯一的障碍。大多数民调显示，“变革阵营”——即反内塔尼亚胡阵营的简称，其范围从左翼到民族主义右翼——若没有哈雷迪或阿拉伯政党的支持，就无法达到61席。其领袖面临着选择：违背承诺或冒险无法组建政府，这将导致以色列再次举行选举。与此同时，内塔尼亚胡及其硬右翼政府将继续执政。
This stance may be all that stands between Eisenkot and Netanyahu’s job. Most polls give the “change camp”—shorthand for the anti-Netanyahu bloc, which stretches from the left to the nationalist right—no path to 61 without either the Haredi or the Arab parties. Its leaders face a choice: break a promise or risk failing to form a government, which would send Israel to yet another election. In the meantime, Netanyahu and his hard-right government would stay in office.
还有一种第三种情况。如果艾森科特的阵营得票超过内塔尼亚胡的阵营，但仍未达到61席，他可以组建一个少数政府——该政府依靠阿拉伯党派的外部支持而生存，而不给他们内阁席位。这种支持将使该阵营能够完成一些事情，包括更换议会议长。
There is a third scenario. If Eisenkot’s bloc outpolls Netanyahu’s but still falls short of 61, he could form a minority government—one that survives on outside support from Arab parties without giving them seats in the cabinet. That backing would allow the bloc to get some things done, including replacing the Knesset speaker.
以色列以前曾这样做过。拉宾的第二届政府在其最后几年依赖阿拉伯议员的投票得以维持。右翼人士抱怨说，1995年通过的《奥斯洛二号协议》在议会以61比59票获得通过，但缺乏“犹太多数”，这一指责一直伴随着此后每一种类似安排。艾森科特的批评者警告说，重复这一实验将引发反弹，并让内塔尼亚胡在以色列人下次投票时赢得压倒性胜利。
Israel has done this before. Rabin’s second government spent its final years relying on the votes of Arab lawmakers. The right complained that the Oslo II agreement, in 1995, approved by a 61–59 vote in the Knesset, lacked a “Jewish majority,” a charge that has hung over every such arrangement since. Eisenkot’s critics warn that repeating this experiment would provoke a backlash and hand Netanyahu a landslide the next time Israelis vote.
艾森科特在自己承诺和未承诺的事情上一直很谨慎。他告诉采访者，由曼苏尔·阿巴斯领导的伊斯兰党派Ra’am不能成为他政府的一部分。但成为政府成员与成为联盟成员并不相同，而两者也不等同于外部支持。阿巴斯已在其伊斯兰党派中加入一名前警察的犹太政治家，这可能使Ra’am成为一个更具吸引力的最终合作伙伴。
Eisenkot has been circumspect in what he has and hasn’t promised. He has told interviewers that Ra’am, the Islamist party led by Mansour Abbas, cannot be part of his government. But being part of the government is not the same as being part of a coalition, and neither is the same as supporting from outside. Abbas has added to his Islamist party a Jewish politician who is a former police officer, likely to make Ra’am a more attractive eventual partner.
没有人比内塔尼亚胡更享受这种混乱局面。他的对手众多，且每个人都相信自己可能成为下一任总理。内塔尼亚胡的阵营纪律严明，且只有一位领袖。
No one is enjoying this mess more than Netanyahu. His opponents are many, and each believes that he could be the next prime minister. Netanyahu’s camp is disciplined, and it has one leader.
然而，纪律也无法让这个群体达到61席。除了作为内塔尼亚胡家喉舌的第14频道之外的所有主要民调都显示，他的阵营也无法组建联合政府。而且，关于10月7日的问题正在逼近他，既包括本杂志的报道，也包括埃及情报部门在事先警告以色列即将发生的袭击。内塔尼亚胡办公室否认他收到任何警报，称该报道是旧闻被翻出来操纵以色列选民。他甚至部分起诉以色列媒体，因为它们放大了这些独家新闻。
Discipline, however, will not get this group to 61. Every major poll except those on Channel 14, the network that functions as Netanyahu’s house broadcaster, shows that his bloc cannot form a coalition either. And questions about October 7 are closing in on him, including from reporting in both this magazine and that Egyptian intelligence warned Israel about the coming assault just ahead of time. Netanyahu’s office denies that he received any alert, calling the story old news recycled to manipulate Israeli voters. He is even suing Israeli outlets in part for amplifying those scoops.
以色列分析人士表示，内塔尼亚胡的最佳情形是僵局：没有任何阵营达到61席，国家将进入另一次选举。届时，内塔尼亚胡将继续看守政府的领导人，在没有新授权的情况下掌权。他在2019年之前的一次政治僵局中也曾这样做——直到纳夫塔利·贝内特反悔，不再坚持之前承诺不对拉阿姆党组建联合政府，僵局才得以打破。
Netanyahu’s best scenario, Israeli analysts say, is a stalemate: No bloc reaches 61, and the country goes to another election. Netanyahu would then remain at the head of a caretaker government, in power without a new mandate. He did that during a previous political deadlock in 2019—one that broke only when Naftali Bennett went back on his earlier promise not to form a coalition with Ra’am.
许多以色列人认为此次选举是自1948年建国以来最重要的选举——以至于一些居住在海外的公民誓言飞回国在10月27日投票。当晚将进行计票，但如果此次选举能决定任何事情的话，结果可能需要数周才能揭晓。
Many Israelis see this election as the most consequential since the state’s founding, in 1948—so much so that some citizens living overseas have vowed to fly home to cast their ballot on October 27. The votes will be tallied that night, but the results may take weeks to determine, if this election determines anything at all.
有一点已经很明了：谁成为以色列下一任总理，都必须违背一两个承诺才能上位。这可能是此人职业生涯中最艰难的决定。除非此人是内塔尼亚胡，他的政治生涯正濒临终结：他将不惜一切代价，也就是任何手段，来保住它。
One thing is already clear: Whoever becomes Israel’s next prime minister will have to break a promise or two to get there. It may be the hardest decision of that person’s career. Unless that person is Netanyahu, whose political career is on the verge of ending: He will do anything, and that means anything, to save it.