Benjamin Netanyahu's party won the most seats in Israel's October election, and the president just handed the job of forming a government to the other guy anyway. Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief who once sat in Netanyahu's own war cabinet, now has up to six weeks to build a coalition. Netanyahu, who spent the week accusing Arab countries of rigging the vote without a shred of evidence, gets to stay on as caretaker and watch.
First Place, No Prize
Here's the math, and it is not complicated. Likud won 27 seats in the Oct. 27 election. Eisenkot's Yashar party won 21. Netanyahu came in first. Congratulations, sir, please enjoy this participation ribbon.
The trouble is that Israel's Knesset has 120 seats, and you need 61 to govern. Netanyahu's bloc won 53. The main bloc opposing him won 48. Neither side is anywhere near the finish line, which means the question isn't who won the most seats. It's who can find 61 friends. President Isaac Herzog decided that person is Eisenkot.
The decision came after marathon meetings this week in which representatives from most of Israel's main parties recommended Eisenkot for the job. That's the part Netanyahu can't spin. Plenty of people had a say in this, and most of them didn't say his name.
Who Is Gadi Eisenkot
Eisenkot served as chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces from 2015 to 2019. He's a veteran of several military campaigns, and he founded the centrist Yashar party, which stands for "Straight," on an anti-corruption and government reform platform. Subtle, it is not.
After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, Eisenkot joined Netanyahu's emergency war cabinet. He left the following year, accusing the prime minister of failing to make progress toward ending the Gaza war and securing the release of hostages. This is not a political rival who read about the war in the papers. Eisenkot lost his son, Gal, a reservist killed in Gaza, along with two nephews.
His first public reaction came on X, where he wrote, "Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything to ensure we are worthy." Herzog will formally hand him the mandate at 5 p.m. local time on Sunday.
The Arab Parties Problem
Now for the part where this gets genuinely tricky. Israel's Arab-majority parties had their highest turnout ever on Tuesday and won an unprecedented 19 seats. Do the arithmetic again. Neither Netanyahu's bloc nor Eisenkot's can reach 61 without some help from them.
The heads of the two largest Arab parties said they'd be willing to help Eisenkot's bloc oust Netanyahu. But most of the Jewish-led parties opposing Netanyahu vowed before the election not to rely on Arab party support to form a government. So Eisenkot's pitch to his own allies is basically: remember that promise? About that.
Eisenkot has indicated he's willing to partner with the Arab parties as long as they meet certain conditions, including agreeing to refer to Hamas as a terrorist group that needs to be destroyed. That's a real line in the sand, and it's one the opposition will have to hold while keeping a very fragile arrangement from collapsing.
Netanyahu's Week From Hell
Let's walk through how Netanyahu spent the days leading up to this. He leveled allegations that some Arab countries interfered in the elections. No evidence has surfaced. The acting director-general of the Central Elections Committee, Din Livne, put it in writing in a letter to a committee member on Thursday: "there is no basis to the claims regarding a systematic compromise of the integrity of the elections."
Then, shortly before Herzog's announcement, Netanyahu released a video calling for a "national unity government" and warning against "hastily swearing in a government with terrorist supporters." That's an apparent reference to the Arab-led parties backing Eisenkot. Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly portrayed those parties as a national security threat.
Yashar fired back on X, urging Likud members to disavow their own alliance with "radical parties," a reference to some of the settler-linked and ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu's religious-nationalist coalition. Pot, meet kettle. Kettle, meet pot.
Six Weeks and a Cliff
Eisenkot gets 28 days to assemble a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension. That's up to six weeks of negotiating with rival parties that, in some cases, swore they'd never sit in the same room.
If he fails, Herzog can give another lawmaker a shot. If that also fails, Israel goes back to the polls for another election, and Netanyahu stays on as prime minister the whole time. He remains caretaker prime minister no matter what happens in the meantime.
There's one more wrinkle. Once the new Knesset is sworn in, even without a government decided, Eisenkot's bloc plus the Arab parties would control a majority in the parliament. That means they could begin passing laws. Netanyahu would be a caretaker watching a legislature he doesn't control rewrite the rules around him.
The Dingo Take
Two weeks ago, Netanyahu had a Trump endorsement delivered with enthusiasm, a first-place finish, and the confident posture of a man who has outlasted every challenger for years. Today he's a caretaker prime minister releasing videos about "terrorist supporters" while the president hands his main rival the keys. That's a fast fall for a guy who finished first.
Look at what the winning-by-six-seats strategy actually bought him. Nothing. In a parliamentary system, the most seats doesn't mean the most friends, and Netanyahu spent years making sure he had very few of the second kind. The week's greatest hits included accusing Arab countries of rigging an election with no evidence, then watching the election committee tell him, in writing, that there was no basis for it. When your own election officials have to fact-check you in a letter, the problem isn't the voters.
The real test is Eisenkot's. Stitching together a coalition that depends on Arab parties his own allies promised to avoid is the political equivalent of defusing a bomb with oven mitts on. He might pull it off. He might not. But the man who wins a plurality and still can't form a government has no one to blame but the coalition he built, and everyone watching knows it.
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