Gadi Eisenkot Gets Israel’s Mandate With 67 Recommendations but a 48-Seat Coalition Core

Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, received the mandate to form Israel’s next government at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem on Sunday 8 November, after factions holding 67 of the Knesset’s 120 seats recommended him and factions holding 46 recommended Benjamin Netanyahu.

President Isaac Herzog said Mr Eisenkot had the “clear and unequivocal support of a majority of Members of Knesset” as the candidate most likely to form a government that could win the Knesset’s confidence, Israel National News reported. He also addressed the obvious objection. “I am well aware that Likud is the largest faction in the incoming Knesset,” he said. Likud won 27 seats on 27 October. One faction of seven members, United Torah Judaism, recommended nobody.

Mr Eisenkot accepted in the language of a crisis. “Israel is in a challenging and fateful state of emergency,” he said at the ceremony, according to The Times of Israel. “This will require creative and unconventional political acts.” The phrase is doing work. The recommendations that won him the mandate are not the votes he has said he will govern with, and the gap between the two numbers is where the next six weeks will be spent.

Who recommended whom?

Every faction in the new Knesset recommended someone except one. The table sets the final seat count the Central Elections Committee published on 30 October, as reported by The Times of Israel, beside each faction’s recommendation in the consultations of 4 and 5 November, as reported by The Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel. The grouping and the totals are this publication’s.

The rows add up to the totals Herzog’s office announced. Two things in them are new since this publication set out the provisional count on 28 October. The final figures moved one seat from Shas to Likud and two from the Joint List to Ra’am, without changing any bloc total. And United Torah Judaism, counted in Mr Netanyahu’s bloc on election night, withheld its recommendation. The Times of Israel reported on 4 November that the Degel HaTorah wing, four of the list’s seven seats, would recommend no one on the instructions of its rabbis. Al Jazeera, citing the Associated Press, tied the decision to the outgoing coalition’s failure to exempt ultra-Orthodox men from military service. That is why Mr Netanyahu’s 53 election-night seats became 46 recommendations.

By this publication’s arithmetic, 19 of Mr Eisenkot’s 67 recommendations, 28 per cent, came from the two Arab-led lists. The four Jewish-led parties that campaigned to replace Mr Netanyahu hold 48 seats between them.

Why is a 67-seat recommendation not a 67-seat coalition?

Because a recommendation commits a faction to nothing after the consultation ends. The Jerusalem Post noted that Ra’am’s and the Joint List’s recommendations do not commit them to joining. The two lists have taken different positions on what comes next: Ra’am has said it is willing to join an Eisenkot government, while the Joint List has ruled out joining but offered to help install him from outside, Al Jazeera reported. “Arab society, and I as an individual, as well as Arab citizens as a whole, we are a bridge,” Mansour Abbas, Ra’am’s leader, said during the consultations, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The constraint is on the other side. The 48-seat bloc has said it will not join a government that relies on Arab support, The Times of Israel reported. Avigdor Lieberman of Yisrael Beytenu has refused a government that depends on the abstention of the Joint List and Ra’am, according to Fox News. Mr Eisenkot’s own offer to other parties is conditional on four principles, among them universal service and recognising Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Likud’s position is the mirror image. “The change bloc wants change in support of terror,” Ofir Katz, the Likud whip, said, according to The Jerusalem Post, and Mr Netanyahu called on Saturday for a unity government anchored by his outgoing coalition.

Does a new government need 61 votes?

No. Basic Law: The Government says in Article 13(d) that the government “shall be formed once the Knesset has expressed confidence in it.” It sets no number, so the general rule applies: under Article 25 of Basic Law: The Knesset, resolutions pass “by a majority of the participants in the vote,” and members who abstain are not counted as participants. Where the Government law wants an absolute majority, it says so: Article 28 requires a no-confidence motion to be “adopted by a majority of its Members,” and Article 10 lets “a majority of the Knesset Members” name a candidate. The difference has been tested. On 13 June 2021 the Bennett–Lapid government was approved by 60 votes to 59, with a Ra’am member abstaining; it did “not require the backing of 61 lawmakers,” The Times of Israel noted at the time.

So the arithmetic that matters is votes cast, not seats held. The table is this publication’s calculation on the final seat count, assuming every member of a faction votes the same way and every member present votes.

Two of the four passing routes depend on Arab-led lists joining or standing aside, which is the dependence Mr Lieberman has refused. The third requires both ultra-Orthodox parties, whose demand for protection of yeshiva students runs against the universal service Mr Eisenkot campaigned on. The fourth requires Likud. Each route is open in law; none is yet open in politics. That is the gap Mr Eisenkot’s “unconventional political acts” would have to close.

How long does he have?

Twenty-eight days, and up to 14 more. Article 7 required Herzog to assign the task within seven days of the results being published; the committee’s final results were due to reach him on Wednesday 4 November, he began consultations that evening, and the mandate came four days later. Article 8 then gives the nominee 28 days, which the President may extend by periods totalling no more than 14. This publication described those steps before the vote; the table below fixes them to dates, on the assumption that every period is used in full.

Two features of the calendar cut against the urgency Mr Eisenkot described. The outgoing government stays in office as a caretaker until a new one wins a confidence vote, so delay leaves Mr Netanyahu where he is. And the second mandate need not go to him: Article 9 lets the President choose any member who agrees, after consulting the factions again if he wishes.

The 26th Knesset is due to be sworn in on Tuesday 10 November, The Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel reported, whatever the state of the talks. Mr Lieberman was due to meet Mr Eisenkot on Monday. The first date in the table, 6 December, is a Sunday; by then Mr Eisenkot reports a government to the President and the Speaker, says he cannot form one, or asks for more time. The Basic Law allows him to ask; it does not require Herzog to agree.