Will Gadi Eisenkot Become Prime Minister of Israel?
Not yet — and not on President Isaac Herzog's word alone. Herzog announced on Saturday that Gadi Eisenkot, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's strongest rival, will get the first chance to form Israel's next government, and Eisenkot is due to be formally tasked with it today, Sunday, November 8, at 5 p.m. at the President's Residence in Jerusalem. He becomes prime minister only if he can build a government that commands a majority in the 120-seat Knesset and is sworn in. Until that happens, Netanyahu stays in the prime minister's office as caretaker — the position we set out in Is Netanyahu Still Prime Minister of Israel?
The plain reality is arithmetic, and it is why people are asking. The October 27 election left nobody with a majority: Netanyahu's religious-nationalist bloc holds 53 seats, the bloc aligned with Eisenkot holds 48, and Arab-led parties hold 19 — the final results we reported here. In the consultations that followed, factions representing 67 lawmakers recommended Eisenkot and 46 recommended Netanyahu. But a recommendation is not a coalition: Eisenkot's 67 includes the Arab parties, and AAP, reporting the Associated Press, says he has declined to join forces with them, without whose support he has no majority of his own. The number that won him the mandate is a number he says he will not govern with.
What Eisenkot claims is that the moment calls for unity anyway. In a post on X after Herzog's decision, he wrote: "Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything I can to ensure we are worthy." Herzog's office, for its part, presented the choice as the product of the consultations: the president invited Eisenkot to the residence "where he will be tasked with forming the government tomorrow," a spokesperson said on Saturday.
"Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything I can to ensure we are worthy." — Gadi Eisenkot, on X, after being chosen to form a government
Stated plainly, in a parliamentary system power is a count, not an announcement. A president can hand a politician the first turn, the better recommendations and the headlines — none of that moves a single seat. Sixty-one members willing to sit in one government is the only thing that makes a prime minister, and on the count as it stands, that government does not exist for either man.
The consequence is a negotiating season with a clock on it. From the formal tasking, Eisenkot has 28 days to forge a government, with a possible 14-day extension — a first deadline in early December. AAP lists his theoretical paths: a minority government with Arab support from the outside, a coalition with the ultra-Orthodox parties he and his allies have shunned, or a unity government with Netanyahu himself — and notes analysts say all three are unlikely to take shape. If he fails, another candidate can try; the whole process has a deadline of about 100 days, and if no one succeeds, Israel holds another election. So the question that follows is the real one: if the man chosen first cannot use the votes that chose him, whose 61 does this Knesset actually contain?
The details that matter are these. Likud won the most seats of any single party, 27, while Eisenkot's Yashar party came second with 21; his wider coalition spans four centre-left to right-wing Jewish-led parties totalling 48, and the two Arab-minority parties won an unprecedented 19 between them. Eisenkot is a former chief of Israel's military who campaigned on his security record, criticised settler violence against Palestinians, and opposes Netanyahu's far-right partners Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. The new Knesset is due to be sworn in on November 10. Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, is fighting to stay in office after his coalition lost its majority — but he remains prime minister while all of this is argued out, and Eisenkot's own words remain a promise, not a government: "Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything I can to ensure we are worthy."