Herzog Gives Eisenkot First Shot at Forming Israeli Government, a Setback for Netanyahu

On Saturday night, Israeli President Isaac Herzog announced that Gadi Eisenkot, the opposition candidate, would get the first chance to assemble a governing coalition after the elections of Oct. 27. Within moments, Eisenkot posted on X that this was the time to establish a national emergency government, and that he would do everything possible to prove himself worthy.

Eisenkot is a former military chief who ran as the main challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving premier. The president's decision puts him a step closer to ousting Netanyahu, and it is a setback for the prime minister. Herzog's choice followed consultations this week in which representatives from most of Israel's main parties recommended that Eisenkot be given the task.

He now has up to six weeks to build a coalition, and the arithmetic is difficult. Netanyahu and his allies lost their parliamentary majority in last month's vote, but the bloc led by Eisenkot did not win one either. That left Arab-led parties, which made historic gains, as potential kingmakers, a role that carries heavy political risk. An Arab party has joined a governing coalition only once in Israel's history, and a partnership of that kind could be especially divisive for Eisenkot after more than three years of war in Gaza. The country is still reeling from the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the wars that followed in Gaza and beyond.

Netanyahu has been working to head off any alliance between Eisenkot and the Arab-led parties. That campaign has included unsubstantiated claims that those parties "stole" the elections. Shortly before Herzog spoke, Netanyahu released a video statement calling for a national unity government and warning against hastily swearing in a government with "terrorist supporters," his term for the Arab-led parties. He and his allies have repeatedly cast those parties as a threat to national security. Eisenkot has signaled he is willing to work with them under certain conditions, including that they call Hamas a terrorist group that must be destroyed.

Eisenkot has other paths, none of them easy. He and Netanyahu, whose Likud is the largest single party in parliament, could try to form a broad unity government with the major Jewish parties. But the two men differ deeply on issues that would be hard to bridge. One is Netanyahu's dependence on religious parties that demand draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men. Another is Netanyahu's opposition to a formal investigation into the security failures surrounding the Oct. 7 attacks.

The alternative is a minority government, held up by outside support from Arab parties that would not be formal coalition members. Yet other members of Eisenkot's own bloc have said they would reject such an arrangement. Any route to a majority, then, requires candidates to make compromises that could anger their own voters.

Eisenkot's party, Yashar, answered Netanyahu's video with a statement on X. It urged members of Likud to disavow their alliance with "radical parties," an apparent reference to the far-right parties in Netanyahu's religious-nationalist base. The statement said Eisenkot would include only parties and lawmakers who support his party's principles.

The next six weeks will show which path he chooses: a unity government, a minority government leaning on Arab parties, or no coalition before the deadline.