President Isaac Herzog opened two days of consultations with party leaders on Wednesday, and the arithmetic of recommendation offers the first genuine opening for Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents since the October 27 election. Gadi Eisenkot is expected to receive the recommendations of 56 to 67 lawmakers, compared with roughly 46 for Netanyahu, once the Arab majority parties formally back him. The United Arab List, known as Ra’am, announced before its meeting with Herzog that it would recommend Eisenkot, and the Joint List is expected to follow.
That gives Eisenkot a numerical path to the premiership that did not exist a week ago. But a recommendation is not a coalition. The 67 lawmakers who might recommend Eisenkot do not constitute a governing majority, and the gap between recommending a candidate and sitting in a government with him is where the entire political crisis now resides.
The central obstacle is not Netanyahu’s 53 seat bloc. It is the refusal of the Jewish parties in Eisenkot’s own camp to accept the support that would make him prime minister. Avigdor Lieberman, whose Yisrael Beytenu recommended Eisenkot on Wednesday, used the same meeting to state unequivocally that his party would oppose any government dependent on Arab parties. Oded Forer of Yisrael Beytenu told Herzog that “it is impossible to expect us to sit in a government that would be dependent on parties that are unwilling to recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization”. Lieberman has warned that a minority government propped up from outside by the Arab parties could collapse within a year and pave the way for Netanyahu’s return.
Eisenkot himself has set four conditions for coalition partners, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, condemnation of Hamas, mandatory service, and commitment to the Declaration of Independence that were designed to create a Zionist government, not an Arab backed one. Ra’am’s Mansour Abbas has accepted Israel as a Jewish state and could potentially meet Eisenkot’s conditions, which is why the party feels able to recommend him. But Lieberman’s red line means that even if Eisenkot wanted to rely on Ra’am and the Joint List, he cannot count on the votes of his own recommended partners. The math works on paper and fails in practice.
Netanyahu has responded to his isolation not by conceding defeat but by trying to convert it into a different kind of victory. He has called for a “broad national government”, with himself at its head and his allies have floated the idea of a unity arrangement with Eisenkot underwritten by President Trump and President Herzog as guarantors. Benny Biton, a mayor close to Netanyahu, said on Sunday that “Benjamin Netanyahu wants unity” and insisted it was “neither deception nor an election manoeuvre,” adding that Herzog and Trump would act as guarantors for Eisenkot. Trump’s reported support for a unity government excluding the far right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich suggests Washington is hedging its bets.
But Eisenkot has ruled out sitting in a government led by Netanyahu, even if Trump himself were to request it. And Netanyahu’s own partners are not helping his cause: Religious Zionism’s Orit Strock declared that Arab parties “cannot be part of any government” and described Arab citizens who celebrate their electoral victory as “our enemies”. A unity government requires both leaders to abandon the positions on which they campaigned, and neither has shown any sign of doing so.
Herzog has structured the consultations to maximize pressure on the parties. He began with the smaller factions and will wait until Thursday to meet Likud and Yashar, a deliberate sequencing designed to avoid the appearance of a foregone conclusion. Once he tasks a candidate, that lawmaker has 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14 day extension. If the first attempt fails, Herzog can give the mandate to someone else, who receives 28 days without an extension. If that too fails, a majority of lawmakers can nominate a candidate within 21 days, or Israel heads back to the polls. The procedural architecture is built for deadlock, not resolution. Israel Hayom has identified four realistic scenarios: protracted negotiations leading to another election, a minority government dependent on Arab outside support, a party breaking a campaign promise to switch sides, or a unity government of the major forces.
The first is the most likely. Netanyahu has every incentive to run down the clock, calculating that a second election, with fewer wasted votes on right wing parties that failed to cross the threshold, lower Arab turnout, and a more favorable environment could restore his majority. Eisenkot has the opposite incentive: to force a government now, before the momentum of the anti Netanyahu vote dissipates. But he cannot force Lieberman to accept Arab support, and he cannot force the Arab parties to join a government that treats them as a necessary inconvenience rather than a legitimate partner.
The most probable outcome is not a clean resolution but a prolonged period of caretaker government, failed mandates, and a third election within two years. The opposition bloc is not a coalition but an alliance of convenience united only by hostility to Netanyahu. Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid, Eisenkot’s Yashar, Lieberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, and the left-wing Democrats disagree on the Palestinians, the role of religion in public life, the economy, and the judiciary.
The Arab parties, which won a record 19 seats, have been treated as pariahs by the very parties that now need their votes. And Netanyahu, facing corruption charges that could send him to prison if he loses the immunity of office, has no intention of going quietly. A unity government remains the only configuration that could command a stable Knesset majority without relying on either the far right or the Arab parties, and it is the configuration that both Netanyahu and Eisenkot have publicly rejected.