The former military chief will formally receive the mandate on Sunday after securing the backing of 67 lawmakers. Netanyahu called for a unity government hours before the announcement.
President Isaac Herzog announced Saturday night that he would task Yashar leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming Israel’s next government, giving the former military chief the first chance to assemble a coalition after the October 27 election left neither him nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a clear path to power.
Herzog invited Eisenkot to the President’s Residence on Sunday at 5 p.m. to formally hand him the mandate. Eisenkot will have 28 days to form a government, with a possible extension of up to 14 days.
Parties representing 67 of the Knesset’s 120 members recommended Eisenkot, while 46 backed Netanyahu. United Torah Judaism, a longtime Netanyahu ally with seven seats, recommended neither candidate.
The four parties at the core of Eisenkot’s proposed emergency government won 48 seats. Ra’am and the Joint List, which won 19 seats between them, both recommended him, but Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman has ruled out relying on the Arab parties to form a government.
Earlier Saturday, Netanyahu urged Zionist parties to form a national unity government. “This is a time for unity,” he said in a video statement, arguing that a government dependent on Arab parties would fail to fight Hamas or eliminate Iran’s nuclear threat.
Yashar called Netanyahu’s speech “hysterical,” accusing him of deepening divisions in Israeli society even during the war and undermining the unity and emergency governments he had helped form. The party said Netanyahu invoked unity only when he realized “his days in office are numbered.”
The party said Likud and its allies would have to publicly break with what it called “the extremists,” accept Eisenkot’s four principles and agree to serve under him.
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