As the Israel Defense Forces’ 21st chief of staff, and the country’s most influential professional military authority, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, who stepped into the position Monday, will be operating in the seam zone between military thinking and action and the positions and decisions of the political echelon, particularly at critical junctures at which an error of judgment could exact a very high price in blood.

At present, with the Middle East in general, and Israel’s neighbors in particular, becoming less predictable and increasingly fragmented, volatile and self-destructive by the day, the most important challenge facing the incoming chief of staff is to prevent a large-scale conflagration in the wake of an incident in the field that gets out of hand and escalates, albeit contrary to the wishes of the leaderships of the sides involved.

The chief of staff doesn’t always intervene. However, when an incident has the potential to spark an escalation, he is the one who, after a very brief decision-making process, issues directives to the commanders in the field. And in doing so, the chief of staff essentially determines the height of the initial flames, and then advises the defense minister and cabinet on how to move forward. More precisely, he presents a number of alternatives and explicitly states his preference.

Eisenkot is one of only a handful of senior IDF officials who have military experience as a fighter, a commander and a senior General Staff officer. He has demonstrated composure and level-headedness during various large-scale conflagrations, such as the Second Lebanon War and Operation Protective Edge; and the fact that he served in the past as military secretary to former prime minister Ehud Barak also helps to make him ripe for the position of chief of staff.

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