This photo pair created on October 28, 2026, shows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) addressing the media after voting in Jerusalem on October 27, 2026, and Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot addressing supporters during an election night rally in Tel Aviv in the early morning hours of October 28, 2026.
Jewel Samad, Maya Levin | AFP | Getty Images
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said Saturday night that he would give opposition candidate Gadi Eisenkot the first chance to form a coalition government after the October 27 election.
Eisenkot, a former military commander who ran as a potential challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is now one step closer to ousting Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
“Now is the time to form a national emergency government. We will do everything we can to prove ourselves worthy,” Eisenkot posted on his X account shortly after the president’s announcement.
They have up to six weeks to form a coalition government, a difficult task in a deeply divided country reeling from the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack and the ensuing three years of war in and around Gaza.
In talks with the president this week, representatives of most of Israel’s major political parties recommended that Mr. Eisenkot be given the task of forming a new government. But putting together the necessary parliamentary majority will still be difficult, and any potential coalition would force candidates to make tough compromises that could infuriate voters at home.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his allies lost their parliamentary majority in last month’s elections. However, Eisenkot’s bloc also failed to win a majority. As a result, Arab-led parties that had made historic strides were left as potential but politically fractious kingmakers.
Only once in Israel’s history has an Arab party joined a coalition government. Forming such an alliance could be particularly divisive for Eisenkot after more than three years of war in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has waged a campaign to block Eisenkot’s alliance with Arab-led parties, including unsubstantiated claims that Arab parties “stolen” the election. Shortly before Herzog’s announcement, he issued a video statement calling for a “government of national unity” and warning against “hastily speaking ill of a government that has supporters of terrorism.” Herzog uses the term to refer to Arab-led political parties.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly portrayed Arab-led parties as a threat to national security, but Prime Minister Eisenkot has indicated he is willing to partner with Arab-led parties under certain conditions, including calling Hamas a terrorist group that must be exterminated.
Eisenkot and Netanyahu, whose Likud is the single largest party in parliament, could seek to form a broad unity government with the main Jewish parties. However, there are significant differences between men on many issues that will be difficult to bridge. These include Prime Minister Netanyahu’s reliance on religious parties that call for military exemption for ultra-Orthodox men and his opposition to a formal investigation into security failures surrounding the October 7 attacks.
Eisenkot could also seek to form a “minority” government, strengthened by external support from Arab parties that are not official members of the coalition. But other members of his bloc said they would reject such an alliance.
Eisenkot’s party, Yashar, condemned the prime minister’s video in a statement posted on X and urged members of his party, Likud, to disavow any alliance with “radical parties”, an apparent reference to his religious-nationalist-based far-right party.
In a statement, Eisenkot insisted that only political parties and members of parliament who support the party’s principles would participate.
