JERUSALEM (The Thursday Times) — Gadi Eisenkot and the leaders of Israel’s anti-Netanyahu parties have agreed on their candidates for the most powerful posts in the new Knesset, naming former minister Matan Kahana as their choice for speaker as Eisenkot works to form the next government.
Eisenkot, who holds the mandate to form a government, announced the agreement on X on Tuesday. He said he had settled the names with “my partners, the leaders of the change and repair parties”: Naftali Bennett, Yair Golan, Avigdor Liberman and Yair Lapid. The posts are for the 26th Knesset during the period of the mandate.
Under the deal, Kahana, a former minister who is entering the new Knesset, is the bloc’s candidate for speaker. Incoming lawmaker Roy Folkman would chair the Arranging Committee, the temporary committee that handles the Knesset’s business until its permanent committees are set up. Liberman, a former defence minister, would chair the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, and incoming lawmaker Liran Avisar Ben-Horin would chair the Finance Committee.
Eisenkot said the make-up of the committees would be discussed and settled in the Arranging Committee this week and put to the Knesset plenum for approval on Wednesday. The parties have also agreed on setting up special committees, whose details will be published separately.
The speaker controls the agenda of the plenum, while the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee and the Finance Committee are among the most influential in the Knesset. Liberman had earlier backed Lapid for the speaker’s post.
Eisenkot’s mandate and the numbers
President Isaac Herzog gave Eisenkot the mandate on Sunday, starting a 28-day clock that the president can extend by up to 14 days. In Herzog’s consultations, parties holding 67 of the Knesset’s 120 seats recommended Eisenkot, against 46 for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in last month’s election and the opposition bloc 48, with the Arab parties Ra’am and the Joint List taking 19 between them.
A recommendation does not commit a party to joining a coalition. Eisenkot, a former army chief of staff, has proposed a “national emergency government”. Some of his allies have ruled out relying on the Arab parties, while United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, has tied its support for any government to keeping military service exemptions for yeshiva students. Netanyahu stays on as caretaker prime minister until a new government wins a confidence vote in the Knesset.
