JERUSALEM — Israeli President Isaac Herzog will give opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot the first chance to form a government, Herzog’s office said in a statement on Saturday, a decision that puts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s main rival in charge of the coalition talks after last month’s deadlocked election.
Eisenkot has been invited to the President’s Residence on Sunday, where Herzog will formally hand him the mandate at 5 p.m., the statement said. Once he has it, Eisenkot will have 28 days to put a government together, and the president can add 14 more days if the talks need them, according to The Associated Press.
Neither man won the Oct. 27 election outright. Netanyahu’s Likud took 27 seats, more than any other single party, and Eisenkot’s Yashar won 21. But when the parties filed into the President’s Residence this week to say whom they backed, 67 lawmakers recommended Eisenkot and 46 recommended Netanyahu, and 19 of Eisenkot’s recommendations came from the two Arab-led parties.
One crack in Netanyahu’s old bloc mattered. United Torah Judaism, which had backed him after the previous five elections, declined to recommend anyone this time. Netanyahu stays on as caretaker prime minister while the talks run.
Eisenkot, 66, is a former chief of staff of the Israeli military. He founded Yashar, a centrist party, on an anti-corruption and government reform platform, and he led the bloc of parties that campaigned to remove Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
A Majority on Paper, Not Yet a Coalition
The 67 recommendations are not a coalition. Eisenkot wants what he calls a “national emergency government,” and he is ready to swear in a minority government quickly, CNN reported. It would rest on four Jewish opposition parties holding 48 seats between them: Yashar; Together, led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid; Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu; and the Democrats, led by Yair Golan.
Eisenkot has set four conditions for partners: recognizing Israel as a Jewish, democratic, liberal and egalitarian state, a commitment to the values of the Declaration of Independence, universal service — military, national or civilian — and recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization, CNN reported. The last condition keeps the Arab-led parties out of his Cabinet, though they could still prop the government up from outside.
His hardest problem sits inside his own camp. Liberman has ruled out any government that depends on the Arab parties, arguing a minority government would not last and would bring Netanyahu back stronger.
“We’ll have Netanyahu come back with 70 seats for another four years, and from there it’s a short road to annihilation”
Liberman’s answer is a different coalition: 61 lawmakers built with the two ultra-Orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, and without the Arab-led lists. That runs into the opposition’s own campaign promise to end the blanket draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox men, one of the pledges Eisenkot and Liberman both ran on.
Netanyahu Pushes Back
Shortly before Herzog’s announcement, Netanyahu released a video statement calling for a national unity government made up of his whole bloc, and he warned that a minority government backed by the Arab parties would leave Israel unable to survive, CNN reported. He has also challenged the election result itself, claiming the vote was stolen, a claim the Central Elections Committee rejected when it certified the results.
Eisenkot’s party answered on X. “If the Likud wants a broad unity government, it is more than welcome to announce the dissolution of the alliance with the extremists and enter a government under Prime Minister Eisenkot,” the Yashar party said.
Writing on X on Friday, Eisenkot said a caretaker prime minister who has lost the public’s trust should not keep running the security system and law enforcement for even one more day, and he said he intends to form a government as fast as he can.
His first test comes Tuesday, when the new Knesset is sworn in and the opposition tries to replace Netanyahu’s speaker. If Eisenkot cannot assemble a coalition in his 28 days, the mandate passes to Netanyahu for four weeks of his own.
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