Israeli President Herzog Tasks Eisenkot With Forming Government After Split Election Result

Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, has chosen opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot to take the first attempt at building a new government, after an election last week that left both major blocs short of a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.

The arithmetic explains why the decision was open. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies won 53 seats. Eisenkot's centrist Yashar party and three other Jewish opposition parties in his bloc won 48. Neither is near the 61 needed. Two Arab-led alliances, the United Arab List and the Joint List, together took 19 seats, an unprecedented total that followed a surge in turnout among Arab voters.

That result puts those two alliances in a position to decide who governs. But all but one of the Jewish parties pledged before the vote not to work with them to form a government. No party in Israel has ever won an outright majority, so every government in the country's history has been a coalition. The question is what kind this one will be.

Herzog spent the week consulting delegations from the incoming Knesset members. His office said Eisenkot received 67 recommendations for the premiership and Netanyahu 46. The president has broad discretion here: he can pick whoever he believes has the best chance of assembling a coalition, and he does not have to choose the leader of the largest party. His office said it had informed both Eisenkot and Netanyahu of the decision.

Eisenkot, a former military chief, now has 28 days to form an administration, with a possible 14-day extension. He responded on X, writing that it was time to form a national emergency government and that he would do everything to be worthy of the task.

The results pointed to three broad routes. One is a national unity government that includes both Netanyahu and Eisenkot. Another is a right-wing coalition in which Netanyahu is joined by defectors from Eisenkot's bloc. The third is an Eisenkot-led government backed by the Arab parties. Eisenkot and every member of his bloc except one have previously refused to enter government with Arab parties, though there has been speculation that an agreement could still be reached. A deal with the ultra-Orthodox parties is another possibility, but it too would be hard to achieve.

There is precedent for the unity option. In 2020, after three deadlocked elections, Netanyahu and the centrist Benny Gantz agreed a power-sharing deal in which the premiership rotated between them. The years from 2019 to 2022 were among the most fractured in Israeli politics, with five separate elections as Netanyahu and his rivals repeatedly failed to cooperate.

Herzog has tried to head off a repeat. In his consultations he said he expected factions and their representatives to understand that, in the current reality, not every commitment and promise can be fulfilled. The remark reads as a nudge toward compromise on the pre-election pledges that now stand in the way. Eisenkot's 28-day clock is running, and whether those pledges bend will decide whether he succeeds or the country faces another vote.