Netanyahu's Rival Eisenkot Given First Chance to Form Israel's Next Government

Israeli President Isaac Herzog has tasked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming the country's next government, dealing a significant setback to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to retain power after an inconclusive general election on 27 October left parliament without a clear majority.

Herzog announced his decision on Saturday, after consultations in which factions representing 67 of the Knesset's 120 members recommended Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff who leads the Yashar party, while 46 backed Netanyahu. The remaining seven lawmakers, from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, recommended neither candidate. The formal handover of the mandate is scheduled for Sunday at 5pm at the President's Residence in Jerusalem.

The numbers, however, tell only part of the story. The election itself produced three distinct blocs: Netanyahu's right-wing and religious bloc won 53 seats, Eisenkot's four-party alliance won 48, and Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats — eleven for the Joint List and eight for Ra'am. Likud remained the largest single party with 27 seats, while Eisenkot's Yashar won 21. The 67 recommendations for Eisenkot are his alliance's 48 seats plus the 19 Arab-party seats, but Eisenkot has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties as formal coalition partners.

That leaves the former general facing a difficult arithmetic problem. A government needs the support of at least 61 lawmakers, and his existing alliance is thirteen short. Herzog himself stressed that the recommendation tally would not determine his decision, saying his task under the law was to judge who has the ability to form a government, "and that is not entirely clear, given the mutual vetoes between the blocs and within the blocs themselves". Eisenkot will have 28 days to assemble a coalition, with a possible extension of fourteen days, while Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister.

The decision is nonetheless a political victory for the opposition and a measure of how far Netanyahu's standing has fallen. Eisenkot, who entered politics in 2022 after serving as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, has presented himself as a unifying figure capable of ending years of political deadlock, and his supporters argue that the election showed a majority of Israelis want a change of government. His critics, including within his own camp, question whether a coalition built on such fragile foundations could govern at all — and whether a man who has never held political office can hold together parties that agree on little beyond their opposition to Netanyahu.

The reaction online was swift and sharply divided. A thread on the announcement in r/worldnews drew more than 16,000 upvotes and over 2,000 comments within hours, with many users welcoming the prospect of Netanyahu's departure — several singling out the possible removal of far-right ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — while others warned that the opposition itself is divided and that the mandate is only the beginning of a long negotiation. Prediction markets, for their part, had already priced in the outcome: Polymarket put Eisenkot receiving the first mandate at 100% before the announcement, and gives an 80% chance that the next government is formed by 3 June. The coming weeks will show whether the arithmetic of 67 recommendations can be turned into the politics of 61 votes.