Eisenkot secures 67 Knesset recommendations to form Israel's next government as Netanyahu trails on 46
Former army chief Gadi Eisenkot won the backing of 67 of the 120 members of Israel's next Knesset in presidential consultations, giving him a majority over Benjamin Netanyahu's 46, with President Isaac Herzog set to assign the mandate on Sunday.
Israel's long political deadlock took a decisive turn on Thursday, when former army chief Gadi Eisenkot emerged from two days of presidential consultations with the backing of 67 of the 120 members of the next Knesset — a clear majority — to form the country's next government. The outcome leaves Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who secured 46 recommendations, facing the most serious threat to his hold on power in years, and sets up a formal decision by President Isaac Herzog on Sunday.
Herzog concluded the consultations on Thursday evening after meeting every faction elected to the 26th Knesset in the October 27 general election. The vote had left neither of Israel's two main blocs with the 61 seats needed for a majority, forcing the president to sound out the parties before assigning the mandate to form a government. Herzog said he would announce on Sunday, November 8, which leader would receive the task, and he has until November 11 under Israeli law to make the choice.
Eisenkot, who leads the Yashar party, built his majority from an unusually broad alliance. His own party contributed 21 seats, while Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid's B'Yachad added 12, Yair Golan's Democrats eight, and Avigdor Liberman's Yisrael Beytenu seven. The decisive additions came from the two Arab-led parties: the Joint List, with 11 seats, and Ra'am, led by Mansour Abbas, with eight. Together, the six parties reached 67 — six more than the threshold for a working majority.
The Joint List's endorsement, announced on Thursday, was the final piece of the puzzle and the most politically striking. The alliance of Arab-majority parties said its recommendation was driven by public demands to prevent Netanyahu's return to power and to reduce the prospect of a unity government that would keep him in office. It stressed, however, that recommending Eisenkot did not amount to an agreement to join his coalition, a distinction that could matter greatly in the weeks ahead.
Netanyahu's 46 recommendations came from his Likud party and its traditional allies. The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, which holds seven seats, recommended no one — withholding support from its longtime ally — and said its backing for any government would depend on legislation preserving military service exemptions for yeshiva students. Its abstention underlined how far Netanyahu's once-reliable coalition has frayed.
The result caps a remarkable few days for Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces who only recently entered frontline politics. On Tuesday, the leaders of the Jewish-led opposition met in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, in their first joint gathering since the election, and agreed to back him as prime minister. In a joint statement they promised to replace Netanyahu's government "with a national emergency government" as quickly as possible, and said negotiating teams would immediately begin drafting policy guidelines and coalition agreements.
That meeting brought together Eisenkot, Bennett, Liberman, Golan and Lapid, who heads the Yesh Atid party. The leaders stood by four principles set out by Eisenkot, including that all parties in government recognise Israel as a Jewish state and label Hamas a terrorist group — conditions that could exclude some Arab-led parties from any eventual coalition. "We don't have time — we must act with great urgency," Bennett told reporters after the meeting, his party having finished third in the election.
Herzog is not legally obliged to choose the candidate with the most recommendations, and he said on Thursday that the question of who could actually assemble a working coalition remained uncertain because of mutual vetoes both between and within the political blocs. He said he planned to hold direct talks with some party leaders before announcing his decision on Sunday. The candidate who receives the mandate will have 28 days to form a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension.
The obstacles are considerable. Yisrael Beytenu has ruled out a government that relies on Arab parties, even though it recommended Eisenkot, and the Joint List has not committed to joining a coalition. Netanyahu, for his part, warned in his first public appearance since the election against an Arab-Jewish coalition, signalling that he intends to fight the transfer of power. Whether Eisenkot's 67 recommendations can be turned into a functioning government — or whether the mandate produces weeks of fraught negotiation — will become clear only after Herzog's announcement on Sunday.
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