With no clear parliamentary majority and deep divisions among potential allies, ending the Netanyahu era may prove easier said than done.
Even after more than ten days after Israelis voted, the question who dominates the 26th Knesset is not clear. One thing for sure though, despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s theatrics, Israel voted for a change, albeit not wholeheartedly. With every passing day the chances of Netanyahu becoming the prime minister are getting dimmer and dimmer. On Sunday evening in Jerusalem, President Isaac Herzog handed the mandate to form a government to Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief whose Yashar party now leads the anti-Netanyahu camp. It may prove the beginning of the end of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.
The numbers explain both the opportunity and the trap. Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats, eight short of a majority. The Zionist opposition (Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Yair Golan’s Democrats) won 48. Arab-led parties took a record 19, and both Ra’am and the Joint List recommended Eisenkot. That gave him 67 endorsements to Netanyahu’s 46. Endorsements, however, are not a coalition. Eisenkot’s partners campaigned against depending on Arab parties, and Liberman has ruled out even their outside support. That leaves two realistic routes.
The first runs through the Haredi parties. UTJ’s seven seats, with Shas acquiescing, could lift the change bloc to a bare 61. That works only if the ultra-Orthodox accept Eisenkot’s demand for universal military service, and if Liberman delivers the “painful compromises” on conscription he now says he can stomach. The second is a minority government sustained by Ra’am, reprising the 2021 experiment that lasted barely a year. A third option, a Likud that sheds Netanyahu, would require a courage the party has never shown.
Eisenkot has 28 days, extendable by 14, which puts the deadline between early and mid-December. If he fails, Herzog may turn to Netanyahu or another lawmaker. If that fails too, Israel heads back to the polls, probably in spring. Until a new government wins a confidence vote, Netanyahu remains prime minister. He is using the interval to brand any Arab-backed government a security threat, having first cast doubt on the count itself. Should Eisenkot succeed, the change would be real but bounded. Expect a state inquiry into October 7, a conscription law and an end to the assault on the judiciary. Washington and Gulf capitals would gain a more predictable partner, and normalisation with Saudi Arabia would become plausible again. On Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, policy will shift in tone more than substance, and Palestinian statehood will stay off the table. For Netanyahu, ouster means losing the shield of office. His corruption trial grinds on, and his pardon request sits with a president who prefers a plea bargain. Many jurists argue any such deal should require his exit from public life. He could remain opposition leader, waiting for a fragile coalition to crack, as he did in 2022. History suggests it would be a folly to write him off. But at 77, facing a courtroom rather than a cabinet, he may discover that Israel has finally learned to govern without him.