Herzog Hands Eisenkot the Mandate to Form Israel's Next Government — Now Comes the Hard Part
Photo: Yahav Trudler (Yahav Studio), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — Gadi Eisenkot, June 2026 (file photo).
Two weeks after an election that settled nothing, Israel has a new man in charge of trying to settle it. On Sunday, President Isaac Herzog formally handed Gadi Eisenkot — the retired general who leads the centrist Yashar party — the first chance to form a government. It is the biggest opening of Benjamin Netanyahu's long run as prime minister, and it comes with a catch: Eisenkot has the mandate, but he does not yet have the votes.
The arithmetic is the whole story. The October 27 election gave Netanyahu's bloc 53 of the Knesset's 120 seats and Eisenkot's bloc 48. The two Arab-led parties won a record 19 between them. A government needs 61. Nobody is close.
Herzog's choice came down to recommendations, not seats. Factions representing 67 lawmakers told the president they wanted Eisenkot to go first; 46 backed Netanyahu. The seven-member United Torah Judaism faction recommended nobody. That 67-to-46 edge is why Eisenkot got the call — but as Herzog himself stressed, a recommendation is not a coalition. Several of those 67 come from parties that have already said they will not sit with the Arab parties, and Eisenkot has ruled out the Arab parties as formal coalition partners.
The four tests Eisenkot set
Eisenkot is not pretending this will be easy. "We are in a state of emergency, approaching a point of no return for the State of Israel," he said after receiving the mandate. "We must form a national emergency government. This will require creative and unconventional political steps."
He has laid down four conditions for any party that wants in: recognise Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, accept the values of the Declaration of Independence, agree to universal civil or military service, and declare Hamas a terrorist organisation that must be dismantled.
He sounded confident in public. "I am convinced that it is possible and right to form a new government quickly, one that will win a large majority in the Knesset," he said on Sunday.
Three paths to 61 — none of them easy
Reuters laid out the options, and each one has a problem attached. The first is a minority government that leans on Arab-party support for key votes — workable in theory, but Eisenkot has already said the Arab parties will not be formal partners, and several of his own allies refuse to sit with them at all.
The second path runs through the ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas, with seven seats each. Win both and Eisenkot's bloc reaches exactly 61 — not a seat to spare, and only by embracing parties his camp has spent years keeping at arm's length, above all over the exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from military service.
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💛 Donate via PayPalThe third is the one nobody wants to say out loud: a unity government with Netanyahu himself. It would end the deadlock at a stroke, and it would also mean the man Eisenkot ran to replace stays at the centre of power.
Eisenkot called the task "extraordinarily complex" as he accepted it, and the clock is already running: 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension, taking the deadline to December 6. The new Knesset is sworn in on Tuesday.
Why Herzog moved now
The president did not hide the stakes. Herzog pointed to the threat of attack from Iran, the need to make progress toward peace in Gaza, and negotiations with Lebanon and other neighbours — all of which, he argued, need a stable government rather than a caretaker one. Netanyahu stays on as prime minister while the talks run, but a caretaker cannot take the big decisions.
Eisenkot, 66, is a political novice in the strict sense — a soldier for four decades, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2015 to 2019 — who only built Yashar into a 21-seat party this year. Likud, with 27 seats, is still the largest single party. The question now is whether a man who has never negotiated a coalition can assemble one from pieces that do not obviously fit.
If he cannot, the mandate passes on. Under Israeli law, Herzog would then be expected to give Netanyahu his own chance to form a government. Eisenkot has 28 days to prove that the 67 recommendations were the start of something real, and not just a protest vote against the longest-serving leader in the country's history.
Sources
The Times — Binyamin Netanyahu's rival invited to form new Israeli government (9 November 2026)
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