Israel, Herzog to hand the mandate to Eisenkot on Sunday

Consultations closed on Thursday, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog released the count that matters most at this stage of the political process: 67 lawmakers named Gadi Eisenkot, the former chief of staff, as their candidate to lead the next government; 46 confirmed their support for Benjamin Netanyahu. Herzog will formally confer the mandate on Sunday, November 8.

The number 67 tells the story of a composite coalition. Eisenkot can count on his own party, Yashar!, but the decisive weight comes from the Arab parties Ra’am and the Joint List, which chose to name him as prime minister-designate. It is an alignment that some observers describe in harsh terms: according to agency reports, figures from the parties providing external support for the move described the choice in these terms:

“It’s the choice between the lesser of two evils” — figures from the parties backing external support for Eisenkot, sources cited by news agencies

The picture was not so clearly defined until a few hours earlier. Before the Arab lists resolved their position, Israeli broadcaster N12 had recorded a different count: 48 recommendations for Eisenkot against 46 for Netanyahu, with the Arab parties — worth 19 seats on their own — still considered likely but not yet confirmed in support of the former chief of staff. The shift from 48 to 67 thus measures how decisive that bloc of 19 seats was in tipping the final balance.

The question remains as to how stable a government built this way can be. The 67 votes gathered by Eisenkot do not stem from a cohesive governing coalition, but from a set of parties diverse from one another — from Yashar! to the Arab factions — united more by their refusal to name Netanyahu than by any shared program declared during the consultations. It is a base that, by its composition, opens the possibility of a government supported from the outside by forces that will not necessarily join the executive.

For Netanyahu, stuck at 46 recommendations, the figure marks the first time in this round of consultations that the number of his supporters has remained clearly below the majority threshold. The outgoing prime minister has, for now, no alternative path indicated by the sources gathered to overturn the outcome of the consultations before Sunday.

Between now and Sunday, the time available is short: Herzog has already announced the date on which he will officially hand over the mandate, and from that moment Eisenkot will hold the formal mandate to attempt to build a stable government, no longer merely the sum of the recommendations received during the consultations. The number of lawmakers who named him — 67 out of a total that also includes Netanyahu’s 46 — remains for now the only certain figure in this transition.