{"id":57952,"date":"2026-11-08T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-08T01:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=57952"},"modified":"2026-11-08T07:09:00","modified_gmt":"2026-11-08T01:24:00","slug":"israels-president-tasks-opposition-leader-eisenkot-with-forming-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/israels-president-tasks-opposition-leader-eisenkot-with-forming-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel’s president tasks opposition leader Eisenkot with forming government"},"content":{"rendered":"
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BBC:\u00a0 Israel’s president says he will task opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a new coalition government.<\/p>\n

Isaac Herzog has been holding talks with political parties after neither Eisenkot’s bloc nor that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a majority in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset, following last week’s election.<\/p>\n

Eisenkot will now have 28 days to try to form a new administration, with a potential 14-day extension.\u00a0“Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything to ensure we are worthy,” the former military chief wrote on X.<\/p>\n

No political party in Israel has ever won an outright majority, meaning all governments have been coalitions.<\/p>\n

Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish allies won 53 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, while Eisenkot’s centrist Yashar party and three other Jewish opposition parties in his bloc won 48.<\/p>\n

Two Arab-led alliances, the United Arab List and the Joint List, together won an unprecedented 19 seats following a surge in turnout among Arab voters.<\/p>\n

That positions them as potential kingmakers. However, all but one of the Jewish parties pledged before the polls not to work with them to form a government.Herzog said that, after consulting all parties during the week, he would give Eisenkot the first chance to form a government.<\/p>\n

A statement from the president’s office said he had informed both Eisenkot and Netanyahu of the decision.<\/p>\n

Following consultations with delegations from the incoming Knesset members, Eisenkot received 67 recommendations for the premiership and Netanyahu 46, the statement said.<\/p>\n

The president has broad discretion to pick someone they believe has the best chance of building a coalition and does not have to choose the leader of the party with the most seats.<\/p>\n

The election results had implied three possible options for the formation of a government: a national unity administration involving both Netanyahu and Eisenkot, a right-wing coalition involving Netanyahu and defectors from Eisenkot’s bloc, or an Eisenkot-led government supported by the Arab parties.<\/p>\n

Eisenkot and every member of his bloc bar one has previously refused to enter government with Arab parties, but there has been speculation that an agreement could be reached.<\/p>\n

He could also attempt to reach a deal with ultra-Orthodox parties, but that too would be difficult.There is precedent for a unity government. In 2020, following three deadlocked elections, Netanyahu and his centrist rival Benny Gantz agreed a power-sharing deal in which the leadership rotated between the two.<\/p>\n

During his consultations with the parties, Herzog had said that to prevent another round of elections and to build a stable government, he expected “factions and their representatives to understand that, in the current reality, not every commitment and promise can be fulfilled”.<\/p>\n

In the period 2019 to 2022, one of the most politically fractured in Israeli politics, there were five separate elections as Netanyahu and his rivals struggled time and again to co-operate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC:\u00a0 Israel’s president says he will task opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a new coalition government. Isaac Herzog has been holding talks with political parties after neither Eisenkot’s bloc nor that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a majority in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset, following last week’s election. Eisenkot will now have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57952"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57955,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57952\/revisions\/57955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}