The mandate is a beginning, not a government.
Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, has tasked the former army chief Gadi Eisenkot with forming the country's next government, passing over the incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. According to Al Jazeera, Herzog conveyed the decision to Eisenkot on Saturday evening and will formally hand him the mandate at a ceremony on Sunday. The move follows consultations with all political parties this week, after the October 27 general election left neither camp with a majority.
The numbers explain the choice. Parties representing 67 lawmakers recommended Eisenkot, against 46 for Netanyahu's bloc, according to a statement from the president's spokesperson. Yet the election itself was less decisive: Eisenkot's four-party alliance won 48 seats, while Netanyahu's right-wing and religious bloc took 53, both short of the 61 needed in the 120-seat Knesset. Arab-led parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel won a record 19 seats.
Eisenkot now has 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension, to assemble a coalition holding at least 61 seats. The arithmetic is awkward. He has ruled out governing with the Arab-led parties, which would otherwise give him a 67-seat bloc. Winning over the two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, would give him exactly 61 — a single-seat margin with no room for defection.
The timing is pointed. The decision came hours after Netanyahu warned that a government formed by opposition parties with the support of Arab-led parties would lead to Israel's collapse. That intervention frames the contest as one of legitimacy as much as arithmetic, and it signals that the incumbent intends to contest the outcome politically rather than quietly concede.
Eisenkot's own record cuts both ways. He led Israel's military from 2015 to 2019 and sat as an observer in Netanyahu's war cabinet for the first eight months of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, a term that will be invoked by critics on both flanks. His authority rests on military standing and on the anti-Netanyahu majority the parties have described, not on an electoral mandate of his own.
What is not yet known is whether the ultra-Orthodox parties will enter a coalition under his leadership, and on what terms; whether the 67 lawmakers who recommended him will hold together through weeks of bargaining; and what Netanyahu's bloc will do if Eisenkot succeeds or fails. The mandate is a beginning, not a government. The 28 days will decide whether Israel's deadlock breaks or simply hardens.
