Israeli President Isaac Herzog plans to give Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot the mandate to form a government, while the path to a governing majority remains uncertain.
The President’s Office announced the intention Nov. 7 and scheduled a formal ceremony for Nov. 8 at 10 a.m. ET (1500 UTC; 5 p.m. Israel time). If appointed, Eisenkot would have 28 days to form a government, and Herzog could grant as many as 14 additional days.
Factions representing 67 Knesset members recommended Eisenkot for the assignment, compared with factions representing 46 who recommended Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A faction representing seven lawmakers recommended neither. Herzog said mutual vetoes within and between political blocs remained unresolved, so the recommendations do not establish whether either contender can assemble enough support to govern.
The recommendations name a candidate for the mandate; they are not pledges to support a future cabinet. EconoTimes previously reported Yashar’s appeal for Herzog to give Eisenkot the mandate.
The final election count gave Netanyahu’s Likud 27 seats and Yashar 21. Be’Yahad won 12 seats and the Joint List 11; the Democrats and United Arab List (Ra’am) each won eight, while Yisrael Beitenu took seven, according to the Knesset.
Eisenkot served as chief of general staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from 2015 to 2019 and retired after 41 years of military service, the IDF says. A United Nations (U.N.) commission investigating Gaza’s 2018 Great March of Return demonstrations recorded 189 Palestinian deaths from March 30 through Dec. 31. It attributed 183 of those deaths to Israeli security forces’ use of live ammunition. The inquiry assessed security-force conduct and made no individual finding about Eisenkot.
The 26th Knesset is scheduled to hold its inaugural sitting Nov. 10.
