Eisenkot chosen over Netanyahu to form Israel’s next government
President Isaac Herzog has given opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot 28 days to build a coalition of 61 seats, after an election that left no bloc with a majority and made Israel’s Arab parties kingmakers.
Published 8 November 2026 · 05:16 GMT
The summary
Saturday 7 November 2026: President Isaac Herzog tasks opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government, passing over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 28 days: Eisenkot has 28 days to secure a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension; the formal appointment takes place at a ceremony on Sunday at the president’s residence in Jerusalem.
The three lenses
- WestThe Western reading treats the decision as a constitutional answer to a hung parliament.
- EastThe Eastern reading, carried by Singapore’s CNA and by The Hindu in India, reads the same numbers as a story about openings.
- Global SouthThe Southern reading, led by Al Jazeera, puts the Arab vote at the centre of the story.
Key facts
- Saturday 7 November 2026: President Isaac Herzog tasks opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government, passing over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. BBC
- 28 days: Eisenkot has 28 days to secure a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension; the formal appointment takes place at a ceremony on Sunday at the president’s residence in Jerusalem. CNA
- 67–46: parties representing 67 lawmakers recommended Eisenkot for the premiership, against 46 for Netanyahu. BBC
- 53–48–19: Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats, Eisenkot’s bloc 48, and the two Arab-led alliances 19 of the 120 Knesset seats; 61 make a majority. BBC
- 27 October 2026: the election that produced the deadlock; neither side secured a majority in a country polarised by Netanyahu’s hard-right rule and worn down by three years of war. CNA
- Friday 6 November: Eisenkot says it is urgent to replace Netanyahu, calling him a threat to the “very existence of Israeli democracy”; Liberman signals openness to talks on the ultra-Orthodox military-service exemption. CNA
What did President Herzog decide on Saturday?
On Saturday 7 November, President Isaac Herzog asked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot to form Israel’s next government, passing over the incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, after a week of consultations with every party in the incoming Knesset. The formal appointment takes place at a ceremony on Sunday at the president’s residence in Jerusalem, and from that moment Eisenkot has 28 days to assemble a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension if the talks are still moving.
The decision followed the arithmetic of the consultations: parties representing 67 lawmakers recommended Eisenkot for the premiership, against 46 for Netanyahu. The president’s office said Herzog had informed both men of the choice, and Eisenkot answered within hours on X: “Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything to ensure we are worthy.”
The mandate goes to the man who finished second in the election, and that is the point. Under Israel’s system the president is not bound to pick the leader of the largest party; he picks the lawmaker he believes has the best chance of building a coalition. On the numbers Herzog was given, that lawmaker was Eisenkot, not Netanyahu. The deadlock that produced this outcome began with the election of 27 October, which left no bloc with a majority.
What do the election numbers actually say?
The election of 27 October produced a Knesset in three pieces and no majority for anyone. Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies won 53 of the 120 seats. Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party and three other Jewish opposition parties won 48. The remaining 19 went to two Arab-led alliances, the United Arab List and the Joint List, an unprecedented haul that followed a surge in turnout among Arab voters.
Sixty-one seats make a majority, so neither Jewish bloc can govern alone. That is what turned the 19 Arab seats into the hinge of the whole negotiation: with Arab support, Eisenkot would have a majority, and the arithmetic is the reason every conversation since the vote has circled back to the same question. Among the opposition leaders behind those 67 recommendations is Naftali Bennett, whose B’Yachad faction backed Eisenkot.
What is also known is where the lines were drawn before the vote. All but one of the Jewish parties pledged not to work with the Arab lists to form a government, and Eisenkot and every member of his bloc bar one had previously refused to enter a government with Arab parties. The pledges are on the record; whether they survive the arithmetic is the open question of the next four weeks.
What remains undecided in the coalition arithmetic?
The first unknown is the Arab parties themselves. Their 19 seats make them kingmakers, but no agreement with them has been announced, and the speculation that one could be reached is still only speculation. Whether they would back Eisenkot from inside a coalition, from outside it, or not at all is the decision that shapes every other one.
The second unknown is the ultra-Orthodox parties. Eisenkot has opened the door to an alliance with them, and his proposal, national service for all Israelis, with a civilian option instead of the military, is designed to make that door passable. Avigdor Liberman, a member of the opposition bloc who has said he will not sit with Eisenkot if the government relies on Israeli-Arab votes, shifted on Friday toward talks on a law enshrining the ultra-Orthodox exemption from military service, a turn that rearranges the board without settling it.
The third unknown is whether anyone defects. A right-wing coalition built on defectors from Eisenkot’s bloc, or a national unity government pairing Netanyahu and Eisenkot, both remain on the table as possibilities, and Herzog has made no secret of his preference for a broad government that would spare the country another election.
Why does this mandate change Israel’s direction?
Because it is the first time in the long Netanyahu era that the task of forming a government has gone to someone else while Netanyahu is still in office, and because the man who holds it is a former military chief who entered politics as a newcomer and built his appeal to secular and liberal Israelis. The mandate is a verdict on a decade of polarisation under Netanyahu’s hard-right rule, delivered by an electorate worn down by three years of war.
The stakes for Netanyahu are personal as well as political. He faces corruption charges and the prospect of jail if he leaves office, and an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over the Gaza war, whose authority he rejects. On Saturday he warned that a coalition between the opposition and the Arab lists would “dismantle the State of Israel from within” and called instead for a unity government of “all the Zionist parties that want to safeguard our state”.
The stakes for the country reach beyond its borders. Pressure for a unity government could build if Netanyahu follows through on threats to resume war on Iran, and Washington has not given that course its blessing. A government formed by Eisenkot, or a unity government, or a return to the polls: each path points Israel toward a different relationship with its allies, its wars, and its own Arab citizens.
What does the 5D lens show beneath the mandate?
Start with power. The mandate rearranges the triangle that has governed Israel’s last three years: the prime minister, the president, and Washington. Netanyahu’s threat to resume war on Iran is the sharpest edge of that triangle, and the fact that the American president has not given it his blessing gives Herzog’s preference for a broad government a weight beyond ceremony. A unity government would blunt the threat; an Eisenkot government dependent on Arab votes would change the country’s politics from the inside; a failed mandate would hand the initiative back to Netanyahu.
Then the people. The surge in Arab turnout is the demographic fact of this election, and it arrived after three years of war that fell hardest on Gaza and on the reservists called up for repeated tours. The 19 seats are the first time the Arab vote has been the hinge of a government, and the pledges against working with the Arab lists were written before anyone knew the hinge would be needed. History is unkind to such pledges: five elections in four years taught Israel’s politicians that a promise made to win a campaign rarely survives the arithmetic of forming a government, and the 2020 rotation deal is the proof.
The economic dimension is quieter, but it is there in the background of every negotiation: a country that has paid for three years of war, a reservist population stretched by multiple tours, and an ultra-Orthodox exemption that has become a symbol of who carries the burden. Eisenkot’s national-service proposal, with its civilian option, is an attempt to price that burden differently, and Liberman’s Friday shift suggests the price is negotiable. The mandate is a 28-day negotiation about who governs, but the negotiation underneath it is about who serves, who pays, and who belongs.
What changes if Eisenkot succeeds; or fails?
If he succeeds, the first change is the simplest: Netanyahu leaves office, and with that departure the corruption trial loses its prime-ministerial shield. The second change follows from the coalition he builds to get there. A government resting on Arab support would make Israel’s Arab parties governing partners for the first time at this scale, a shift in the country’s politics that no previous government has attempted. A government built on ultra-Orthodox support instead would have paid for its majority with the military-service question, and the price would shape the next budget, the next call-up, and the next election.
If he fails, the mandate does not vanish; it passes on, and the most likely next holder is the man who just lost it. Netanyahu has already called for a unity government, and the opposition has so far stood firm on removing him first; but a failed Eisenkot attempt would test that firmness against the alternative the president has warned about, another round of elections. The pressure would then come from outside as well: the threat to resume war on Iran does not wait for a coalition to form, and a caretaker prime minister with nothing to lose is the most dangerous figure in that equation.
Either way, the 19 Arab seats do not go back in the box. Whatever government emerges, the next campaign will be fought over whether those seats are a legitimate part of governing Israel or a threat to it, and the answer the parties give in the next 28 days will be quoted back to them for years.
What should we watch in the days ahead?
First, the ceremony on Sunday at the president’s residence, where the appointment becomes formal and the 28-day clock starts. Then the meetings: who Eisenkot sees first will say a great deal about which path he intends to take; the Arab party leaders, the ultra-Orthodox parties’ political envoys, or the Likud members his party has urged to break with Netanyahu’s far-right allies and join a unity government under his leadership.
Watch the Arab parties’ language in the coming days for the first sign of whether an understanding is forming, and watch Liberman, whose Friday shift on the ultra-Orthodox exemption showed that positions taken during the campaign are already moving. Watch, too, whether Netanyahu’s call for a unity government of Zionist parties draws any takers from inside Eisenkot’s bloc, because a single defection changes the arithmetic for everyone.
The hard deadline is the end of the 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension if Herzog judges the talks are still alive. If the clock runs out without a coalition, the country faces the choice the president has been trying to avoid: another candidate, or another election. The Bureau will follow the negotiations as they develop.
The three lenses
West Lens:
The Western reading treats the decision as a constitutional answer to a hung parliament. The BBC’s account stresses the mechanics: the president’s broad discretion, the 67-to-46 recommendations, the three options the results left open, and the precedent of 2020, when three deadlocked elections ended in a rotation deal between Netanyahu and his centrist rival Benny Gantz.
East Lens:
The Eastern reading, carried by Singapore’s CNA and by The Hindu in India, reads the same numbers as a story about openings. CNA reports Eisenkot as a political newcomer who has tried to appeal to secular and liberal Israelis and who has opened the door to a once improbable alliance with ultra-Orthodox Jews, while noting that Herzog, a former Labour man in a non-partisan office, has signalled he would like to explore a national unity government spanning the Jewish political spectrum.
South Lens:
The Southern reading, led by Al Jazeera, puts the Arab vote at the centre of the story. Its reporting stresses that the two Arab alliances won 19 seats on the back of anger against Netanyahu, that their surge in turnout made them kingmakers, and that the president’s choice of Eisenkot was made over Netanyahu in a week when the incumbent was warning that any government resting on Arab support would dismantle the state from within.
The consensus
- What we agree on
- What we agree on: President Isaac Herzog has tasked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government, passing over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Eisenkot has 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension; the 27 October election left no bloc with a majority; and the parties’ recommendations split 67 for Eisenkot against 46 for Netanyahu.
- What we don't agree on
- What we disagree on: whether Eisenkot can assemble 61 seats without the Arab parties; whether a national unity government or a coalition resting on Arab support is the more likely outcome; and whether Netanyahu’s warning that such a coalition would dismantle the state is a serious forecast or campaign rhetoric.
- What we know
- What we know: the seat counts; 53 for Netanyahu’s bloc, 48 for Eisenkot’s, 19 for the two Arab alliances; the 61-seat threshold; the formal appointment ceremony on Sunday at the president’s residence; and Eisenkot’s pledge to form a national emergency government.
- What we don't know yet
- What we don’t know: whether the Arab parties will back Eisenkot, and on what terms; whether an agreement with the ultra-Orthodox parties can be reached; whether any lawmaker defects from either bloc; and what Netanyahu will do with the mandate if it comes back to him.
- What we expect
- What we expect: intense negotiations over the next four weeks, with the Arab parties’ position and the ultra-Orthodox question deciding the outcome; growing pressure for a unity government if the talks stall; and the Iran question shadowing every decision until a government is in place.
Questions, answered
Why did President Herzog choose Eisenkot instead of Netanyahu?
Because the consultations pointed that way. Parties representing 67 lawmakers recommended Eisenkot for the premiership, against 46 for Netanyahu, and the president is free to pick the lawmaker he believes has the best chance of building a coalition, not the leader of the largest party. Herzog also said he wanted to prevent another round of elections, and Eisenkot’s bloc, unlike Netanyahu’s, can reach 61 with more than one partner.
Can Eisenkot form a government without the Arab parties?
Only with difficulty. His bloc holds 48 seats and needs 13 more for a majority, so he would have to win over ultra-Orthodox parties, Likud defectors, or both, while keeping his own bloc together. The Arab alliances hold 19 seats, and with their support he would clear the threshold easily, but he and nearly all of his bloc previously refused to govern with them.
What happens if Eisenkot cannot form a government in 28 days?
The president can grant a 14-day extension if the talks are still moving, and Herzog has said plainly that he wants to avoid another election. If no coalition emerges, the mandate can pass to another candidate, and the country would face the prospect of returning to the polls; an outcome every party has said it wants to avoid after five elections in four years.