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Israeli President Isaac Herzog has formally handed former military chief Gadi Eisenkot the first shot at forming the country’s next government, passing over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after last month’s deadlocked election.
Getting into it: Herzog gave Eisenkot the mandate Sunday after 67 lawmakers, including all 19 from Israel’s two Arab-led parties, recommended him, compared with 46 for Netanyahu. Netanyahu even lost one of his own, with United Torah Judaism, a longtime ultra-Orthodox ally, refusing to recommend him. Eisenkot now has 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension, to build a government. But his path is complicated.
His four-party bloc won just 48 seats in the Oct. 27 election, short of the 61 needed for a majority, while Netanyahu’s bloc won 53. Eisenkot wants to quickly set up what he calls a “national emergency government,” likely a minority government backed from the outside by the Arab parties, but his ally Avigdor Liberman has ruled out relying on them and is instead pushing to bring in the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism, which would get him exactly 61 seats. The problem is those parties want the draft exemption for ultra-Orthodox men locked in, and Eisenkot and his allies campaigned on ending it. The Arab parties also haven’t agreed to Eisenkot’s terms for entering his government, which include recognizing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and calling Hamas a terrorist group.
“My door is open and my hand is extended, wholeheartedly and willingly, to anyone who understands the gravity of this moment,” Eisenkot said, making the pitch to Netanyahu’s Likud and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right party too, as long as he’s the one leading the government.
Netanyahu, who has claimed without evidence that the election was “stolen” by Arab parties, called instead for a national unity government and warned that a government relying on Arab support would be “national suicide.” Election officials and Herzog have said the vote was valid.
Eisenkot’s first test comes Tuesday, when the new Knesset is sworn in and the opposition plans to replace Netanyahu’s parliament speaker. If Eisenkot fails, Herzog picks someone else, almost certainly Netanyahu, and if nobody pulls it off, Israel goes back to the polls while Netanyahu keeps running the country as caretaker.
