JERUSALEM (The Thursday Times) — President Isaac Herzog will formally ask Gadi Eisenkot to form Israel’s next government on Sunday, his office said on Saturday, moving the Yashar party leader a step closer to replacing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after last month’s election.
Herzog told Eisenkot of his decision on Saturday evening, after a weekend of further talks with figures across the political system, among them both Eisenkot and Netanyahu. Eisenkot will receive the mandate at a ceremony at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem at 5pm on Sunday, 8pm in Pakistan.
The numbers: in Herzog’s consultations last week, parties holding 67 of the Knesset’s 120 seats recommended Eisenkot and parties with 46 recommended Netanyahu. United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, recommended no one. Eisenkot’s 67 include the Arab parties Ra’am and the Joint List, whose recommendation does not commit them to joining his government.
The clock: once tasked, Eisenkot will have 28 days to put a coalition together, and Herzog can extend that by up to 14 days.
In a video statement on Saturday, Netanyahu said a government formed by Eisenkot with the support of Arab parties would destroy Israel from within, and called instead for a national unity government that would include Likud’s ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox partners.
Yashar called that hypocrisy. “If Likud and its friends are suddenly interested in ‘unity’ and in a broad government, they are more than welcome to announce publicly that they are dissolving the alliance with the extremists, that they accept Gadi Eisenkot’s four principles, and that they are willing to enter a government under prime minister Eisenkot,” the party said. The offer did not mention Netanyahu, whom Eisenkot has said must leave public life along with others who held senior posts on October 7, 2023.
Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, has proposed a “national emergency government” to replace Netanyahu’s. Turning 67 recommendations into a working majority is the harder part: some of his allies have ruled out relying on the Arab parties, and United Torah Judaism has tied its support for any government to keeping military service exemptions for yeshiva students.
