Former Israeli military chief Gadi Eisenkot will be tasked with forming Israel’s next government, after the Arab-led Joint List announced on Thursday that it would recommend him for prime minister, widening his lead over incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the presidential consultations. The Joint List’s decision, which followed a similar announcement by the United Arab List earlier the same day, gave Eisenkot the backing of 67 members of the incoming Knesset, a majority of the 120-seat parliament. President Isaac Herzog announced on Saturday evening that Eisenkot will receive the mandate, which will be formally handed over at a ceremony at the President’s Residence on Sunday. No government has yet been formed, and the outcome of the coalition negotiations remains uncertain.
The development marks a dramatic turn in Israeli politics. Netanyahu, who has dominated Israeli politics for most of the past two decades, saw his bloc win 53 seats in the election to the 26th Knesset, held on October 27, but only 46 members of the incoming parliament recommended him to the president as the candidate to form the next government. The gap between the seats his bloc won and the recommendations he received reflects the decision of United Torah Judaism, a longstanding ally, to decline to recommend any candidate. Eisenkot, by contrast, received recommendations from parties holding 67 seats, a tally that includes his own four-party bloc, the two Arab-led lists, and the support of parties that have not committed to joining his coalition.
The distinction between recommendations and coalition support is central to understanding what has happened. A recommendation to the president is a statement that a party believes a particular candidate should be given the first opportunity to form a government. It does not commit the party to joining that candidate’s government, and it does not guarantee that a government can be formed. Eisenkot’s 67 recommendations give him a strong procedural position, but his path to a working coalition remains unclear, and the negotiations that follow the president’s decision will determine whether he can turn that position into a government.
Eisenkot form government Israel: how the 67 recommendations were built
The 67 recommendations are made up of three groups. The first is the four Jewish-led parties aligned with Eisenkot, which together won 48 seats. Those parties are Yashar, led by Eisenkot himself, which won 21 seats; Together, led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid; the Democrats, led by Yair Golan; and Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman. The second group is the United Arab List, known as Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, which won eight seats and recommended Eisenkot earlier on Thursday. The third group is the Joint List, the Arab-led alliance led by Yousef Jabareen, which won 11 seats and announced later on Thursday that it would recommend Eisenkot. Together, 48 plus eight plus 11 equals 67.
The Joint List’s announcement was the decisive moment of the day. The alliance had previously indicated that it could abstain from recommending any candidate, and its decision to back Eisenkot was described as a surprise in Israeli reporting. The Joint List said its decision was unanimous, following consultations among its component parties, and its leader, Yousef Jabareen, told the president that the decision had not been easy. The alliance said its recommendation aimed to improve the chances of replacing the government and to reduce the prospect of a unity government that keeps Netanyahu in power. Jabareen said the choice was between what the alliance saw as bad and even worse, reflecting the deep policy disagreements between the Joint List and parts of the Jewish opposition.
The United Arab List’s recommendation, announced hours earlier, had already moved Eisenkot closer to a majority. Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, had been expected by some observers to recommend Eisenkot, and its decision was followed by the Joint List’s announcement in the afternoon. The two Arab-led lists together hold 19 seats, a record total for Arab parties in an Israeli election, and their combined support was essential to Eisenkot’s majority of recommendations. Without them, his tally would have been 48, well short of the 61 needed for a parliamentary majority.
Netanyahu’s 46 recommendations came from his own Likud party and from the parties that remain aligned with him, including the Religious Zionist Party, Shas and Zehut, which recommended him on Wednesday, and Otzma Yehudit, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, which recommended him on Thursday. The seven seats held by United Torah Judaism, which declined to recommend any candidate, account for the difference between the 53 seats won by Netanyahu’s bloc and the 46 recommendations he received. The party’s refusal to recommend Netanyahu, after years as a coalition partner, was itself a significant development, and it signalled that the party might be willing to consider other options in the coalition negotiations.
The president’s role and the mandate decision
President Isaac Herzog is responsible for deciding who receives the mandate to form a government, after consulting with the parties elected to the Knesset. By law, the president is required to consult the Knesset factions before making the decision, and he has seven days to do so, with a deadline of November 11. The consultations began on Wednesday at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, and they continued through Thursday, with party delegations meeting the president in turn to present their recommendations.
Herzog announced his decision on Saturday evening, after holding further talks with party leaders to clarify the situation, and will formally hand Eisenkot the mandate at a ceremony on Sunday. Although the result of the consultations was described as clear, with 67 members backing Eisenkot and 46 backing Netanyahu, the president had said he wanted to speak further with the party leaders before making his decision. The president is not legally obliged to choose the candidate with the most recommendations, although in practice the candidate with a majority of recommendations is normally given the first opportunity. The 67 recommendations for Eisenkot are the largest number given to a candidate since 2015, according to Yashar, Eisenkot’s party, which urged the president to give him the task as soon as possible.
The candidate who receives the mandate has 28 days to form a coalition, with a possible extension of 14 days. That timetable means that, with Eisenkot receiving the mandate on Sunday, he will have until early December, and potentially until mid-December with an extension, to put together a government that can win the confidence of the Knesset. The Knesset itself is expected to be sworn in on November 10, regardless of the state of the government or coalition talks, and the new parliament will begin its work while the negotiations continue.
A coalition that is far from agreed
The central difficulty for Eisenkot is that the 67 recommendations do not translate into 67 votes for a governing coalition. Of the 67 members who told the president they support Eisenkot as prime minister, only 48 are actually prepared to ally with each other without caveats, according to analysis in Israeli reporting. The remaining 19 are the members of the two Arab-led lists, and neither of those lists has said it will actually support an Eisenkot-led government in the Knesset. The 67 to 46 tally is therefore, in the words of one report, more a theoretical idea than a reflection of political reality.
Three of the Jewish-led parties in Eisenkot’s bloc are so far refusing to partner with the Arab parties, which creates a basic problem for any coalition. A government needs the support of at least 61 members of the 120-seat Knesset, and the 48 seats held by the four Jewish-led parties fall 13 short of that number. The Arab parties hold 19 seats between them, which would be enough to close the gap, but only if they are willing to support the government, and only if the Jewish-led parties are willing to accept their support. At present, neither condition is clearly met.
The Joint List has made its position clear: it will not formally join an Eisenkot-led coalition, although it may offer support from the outside. Ahmad Tibi, who holds the second slot on the Joint List’s slate, told the president that the alliance would support a minority government from the outside, and that it did not want to help form a government only to see it collapse soon afterwards. A minority government, supported from outside by parties that are not part of the cabinet, is possible in Israeli politics, but it is inherently fragile, and it depends on the outside supporters continuing to back the government on confidence votes.
Yisrael Beiteinu, led by Avigdor Lieberman, has also ruled out a government that relies on Arab parties, which adds a further complication. If Lieberman’s party will not sit in a government that depends on Arab support, and the Arab parties will not join a government, then the arithmetic of a coalition becomes very difficult. The 48 seats of the Jewish-led bloc, minus any party that refuses to participate, would fall even further short of a majority, and Eisenkot would need to find support from elsewhere.
The Hamas question and other obstacles
One specific obstacle has already been identified. Eisenkot has made recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organisation one of his conditions for parties seeking to join his prospective government. Ra’am, the United Arab List, has so far refused to explicitly label Hamas a terrorist organisation, and that refusal has been described as a key sticking point in the negotiations. The disagreement is not a minor detail: it goes to the heart of the political identity of the parties involved, and it is the kind of issue on which neither side can easily compromise without alienating its own supporters.
The leaders of the four Jewish-led parties in Eisenkot’s bloc met for the first time since the election on Tuesday, before the consultations with the president began. The meeting was an early step in the coalition negotiations, and it was followed by further talks in the days after. The four leaders, Eisenkot, Bennett, Lapid, Golan and Lieberman, have to agree not only on who will be prime minister, but on the distribution of cabinet posts, on the government’s policy programme, and on how to handle the many disagreements between their parties. Those negotiations are at an early stage, and the reporting on them has described significant progress in some areas and persistent difficulties in others.
Netanyahu, for his part, has not accepted that the contest is over. In his first appearance since the election, he warned against an Arab-Jewish coalition, a message aimed at the Jewish-led parties in Eisenkot’s bloc and at the wider public. The warning reflects the political argument that Netanyahu and his allies are likely to make in the coming weeks: that a government dependent on Arab parties would be illegitimate or unstable. That argument has been a feature of Israeli politics for many years, and it is likely to be heard again as the coalition talks proceed.
There have also been suggestions of a different outcome altogether. A senior member of Shas’s ruling Council of Torah Sages, Rabbi Moshe Maya, has urged Eisenkot to join Netanyahu in a rotation government, with the ultra-Orthodox parties and Religious Zionism participating. Under such an arrangement, Eisenkot and Netanyahu would take turns as prime minister, and the government would be built around Likud and Yashar, which together hold 48 seats, plus the ultra-Orthodox parties and Religious Zionism. The proposal has not been accepted, and it would require a major change of direction from Eisenkot, but its existence shows that the shape of the next government is still open to discussion.
What the election result means
The election to the 26th Knesset, held on October 27, produced a result that was close and inconclusive. No single bloc won a clear majority, and the distribution of seats left the outcome dependent on the smaller parties and on the president’s consultations. The certified results divided the Knesset into three broad groups: Netanyahu’s nationalist and religious allies won 53 seats, the four Jewish-led parties aligned with Eisenkot won 48, and the two Arab-led lists won a combined 19. A parliamentary majority requires 61 of 120 seats, and no group reached that number on its own.
The result reflected a shift in Israeli politics, with the Arab parties winning a record total of 19 seats and the opposition bloc holding together well enough to present a credible alternative to Netanyahu. It also reflected the fragmentation of the Israeli party system, in which a large number of parties compete for seats and in which governments are almost always coalitions of several parties. The need to build a coalition from parties with different, and sometimes conflicting, positions is a normal feature of Israeli politics, but the current situation is unusually difficult, because the arithmetic requires cooperation between parties that have historically been unwilling to work together.
Eisenkot himself is a relatively new figure in party politics, although he is well known as a former military chief. He led Yashar, a new party, into the election, and the party won 21 seats, making it one of the largest in the Knesset. His background as a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces gives him a security credential that is valued in Israeli politics, and his decision to enter politics as the leader of a centrist party positioned him as a potential alternative to Netanyahu. The election result, and the recommendations that followed, have made him the most likely next prime minister, but they have not yet made him prime minister.
What happens next
The next step is the formal handover of the mandate on Sunday, when Herzog will task Eisenkot with forming a government at a ceremony at the President’s Residence. Eisenkot will then have 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension, to negotiate a coalition and present it to the Knesset for a vote of confidence. The negotiations will need to resolve the basic question of how a government can command 61 votes, and they will need to do so in a parliament where the parties that recommended Eisenkot do not agree on whether they will work together.
Several outcomes are possible. Eisenkot could form a minority government supported from outside by the Arab parties, although that would be fragile and would depend on the continued support of parties that have said they will not join the cabinet. He could form a broader coalition that includes parties from outside his current bloc, possibly including United Torah Judaism, which declined to recommend Netanyahu and has signalled that it might be willing to switch teams for the right price. Or the negotiations could fail, in which case the mandate would pass to another candidate, or the country could face another election, a prospect that the president has warned against.
President Herzog, in opening the consultations, called on Israel’s political leaders to accept the election results and to demonstrate flexibility in coalition negotiations, warning against political entrenchment that could force the country into another election. The warning reflects the recent history of Israeli politics, in which repeated elections were held when coalitions could not be formed, and it underlines the pressure on the party leaders to find a workable arrangement. Whether they can do so, and whether Eisenkot can turn his 67 recommendations into a government, will become clear in the weeks after the president’s decision. Eisenkot has been given the first opportunity, but the government itself remains to be built.
Sources
USN reviewed reporting from multiple outlets for this story. Read more from The Times of Israel, The Jerusalem Post and Nhan Dan.