Thousands Rally in Tel Aviv Urging Eisenkot to Form Jewish-Arab Coalition as Herzog Prepares November 4 Consultations

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday, October 31, 2026, with a single demand for Israel’s opposition leaders: stop ruling out the partners who could actually deliver a parliamentary majority, and form a government that includes Arab parties. The rally, held at Habima Square in the days after an election that produced no winner, turned the arithmetic of a hung parliament into a street-level appeal, aimed most directly at opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot.

The demonstration matters because the numbers leave almost no other route to 61 seats. The certified final results gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc 53 seats, Eisenkot’s bloc 48, and Arab-led parties 19 in the 120-seat Knesset. A partnership between Eisenkot’s camp and the Arab parties would reach 67 seats, enough to govern, but it would require Eisenkot and several of his allies to abandon positions they held throughout the campaign. Tel Aviv Jewish Arab coalition Eisenkot November 2026

What happened in Tel Aviv on October 31

The Habima Square gathering

Protesters assembled at Habima Square in Tel Aviv on Saturday, October 31, calling for a Jewish-Arab coalition government after the October 27 general election. Reports described the crowd in the thousands, with demonstrators urging opposition leaders to cooperate with Arab political parties and end Netanyahu’s long tenure as prime minister. The gathering followed days of inconclusive results and intensifying speculation about who, if anyone, could assemble a governing majority.

The timing was deliberate. With the new Knesset due to be sworn in on November 10 and President Isaac Herzog’s formal consultations scheduled to begin on November 4, protesters sought to influence the coalition conversation before mandates were handed out. Their message was aimed less at Netanyahu’s camp, which lacks a majority of its own, than at the opposition figures whose cooperation would be essential to any alternative government.

What protesters were asking for

At its core, the protest was a demand that opposition leaders reconsider their refusal to rely on Arab parties. For years, several opposition leaders have treated cooperation with Arab-led lists as politically unacceptable, citing differences over security policy, the war in Gaza, and the broader direction of the state. The Tel Aviv demonstrators argued that this refusal now blocks the only realistic path to replacing the incumbent government.

The appeal also carried a democratic argument: Arab parties won a record combined 19 seats on strong turnout among Arab citizens, who make up roughly a fifth of Israel’s population. Protesters contended that excluding parties with that level of support from government formation leaves a large section of the electorate permanently outside power, regardless of how they vote.

Why the election left no winner

The final seat count

Israel voted on Tuesday, October 27, 2026, in its first national election since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023. Turnout reached 77.9 percent, with 5,716,665 ballots cast, one of the highest participation rates in decades. When the certified final count was published on October 30, Netanyahu’s Likud remained the largest single party with 27 seats, followed by Eisenkot’s Yashar with 21, B’Yachad with 12, the Joint List with 11, and Ra’am with 8.

The bloc totals told the fuller story. Netanyahu’s right-wing and ultra-Orthodox bloc finished with 53 seats, seven short of a majority. Eisenkot’s opposition bloc finished with 48 seats. The remaining 19 seats went to Arab-led parties: the Joint List, an alliance of three Arab factions, and Ra’am, the United Arab List. No bloc could govern alone, and every plausible majority runs through at least one camp that has so far refused to cooperate with another.

The 61-seat arithmetic

A government in Israel needs the support of at least 61 members of the 120-seat Knesset. Netanyahu’s 53 seats plus any partners from his own bloc cannot reach that threshold without outside help, and his partners have opposed cooperating with Arab parties. Eisenkot’s 48 seats face the same problem in reverse: adding the 19 Arab seats produces 67, a comfortable majority, but only if the opposition bloc’s internal objections can be overcome.

That arithmetic explains why the Tel Aviv protest focused on Eisenkot rather than on the president or on Netanyahu himself. The opposition leader is the figure who could, in principle, assemble a majority tomorrow, if he accepted Arab support. It also explains why the protest’s demand is so contentious: it asks Eisenkot to cross a line that he and his allies drew publicly and repeatedly before the election.

The Joint List offer

Tibi’s message to Eisenkot

The most significant political development accompanying the protests came from senior Joint List member of the Knesset Ahmad Tibi, who said on Saturday that his party was ready to help anti-Netanyahu parties form the next government. Tibi called on Eisenkot to follow the example of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who relied on the votes of Arab lawmakers to secure parliamentary approval for the Oslo accords with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s.

Tibi framed the offer as a responsibility rather than a bargain. In his account, the Joint List wants to be part of the solution and part of the hope for change, helping to replace what he described as a terrible government. The historical parallel was chosen carefully: Rabin’s reliance on Arab votes remains one of the most cited precedents for Arab-Jewish parliamentary cooperation in Israeli history, and also one of the most contested.

Support without cabinet seats

Crucially, Tibi said the Joint List does not seek to join the government itself. He stated that he does not want a ministerial post and does not want to be in the cabinet, but insisted that there can be no change without the Arab parties. That formulation opens the door to an arrangement in which Arab parties support a government from outside, voting for it in confidence motions and on key legislation without holding ministries.

Such outside-support arrangements are familiar in parliamentary politics, but they are fragile by nature. A government dependent on parties outside the cabinet must negotiate its survival vote by vote, and its partners can withdraw support at any moment. For Eisenkot, the offer lowers one barrier, since he would not need to place Arab politicians in his cabinet, while leaving another barrier intact: he would still depend on their votes to govern.

Eisenkot’s dilemma

His previous red lines

Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff who leads the opposition bloc, campaigned on replacing Netanyahu without relying on Arab parties. That stance was shared, in various forms, by several of his prospective partners, and it shaped the opposition’s pitch to voters who wanted change but were uneasy about Arab-Jewish power-sharing. Reversing it now would hand Netanyahu’s camp an immediate line of attack: that Eisenkot won votes on one promise and governed on another.

At the same time, holding the line leaves Eisenkot with no visible route to power. His bloc’s 48 seats cannot reach 61 without either Arab support or defections from the ultra-Orthodox parties in Netanyahu’s camp, which have their own disputes with the opposition over military conscription exemptions. The Tel Aviv protesters argued that this is precisely why the red line should fall: a promise that makes government impossible is not a strategy, it is a dead end.

The Hamas condition

Eisenkot has also set a condition for any potential Arab partner: that it refuse to describe Hamas as anything other than a terrorist organisation. Joint List chairman Yousef Jabareen, in a separate interview, declined to describe Hamas as a terrorist organisation, and dismissed claims that Qatar interfered in the election to boost Arab participation. That refusal keeps a substantive obstacle in place even if the political willingness to cooperate grows.

The condition matters because it goes beyond parliamentary arithmetic to questions of legitimacy and security policy. Eisenkot’s supporters argue that a government dependent on parties that will not condemn Hamas would be politically untenable and strategically incoherent. Arab party leaders counter that they are being asked to pass a test that no other prospective partner faces, and that their voters’ democratic weight should not depend on slogans.

The rest of the opposition bloc

Bennett and Liberman positions

Eisenkot does not decide alone. His bloc includes leaders who have been even more categorical in rejecting cooperation with Arab parties, notably former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman. Liberman’s refusal to engage with Eisenkot or Bennett further complicates negotiations, according to analysts tracking the coalition talks, and it means that even an Eisenkot decision to accept Arab support would not automatically deliver his whole bloc.

Bennett’s position carries particular weight because his party, B’Yachad, holds 12 seats, the third-largest single party in the Knesset. Without Bennett, an Eisenkot-led government would need to find seats elsewhere, and the available sources are few. The Tel Aviv protest therefore spoke to the whole opposition leadership, not only to Eisenkot, even though its slogans named him most often.

Negotiations already under way

Jabareen said negotiations with most of the leaders of the opposition bloc had already begun, suggesting that the public debate is running behind private conversations. If those talks are substantive, they may already be testing the formulas that could make a government possible: outside support rather than cabinet membership, agreement on a limited legislative programme, and understandings on security and budget questions that avoid the most divisive issues.

The Joint List also proposed two early priorities for any new parliament: replacing Likud’s Amir Ohana as Knesset speaker, and establishing a state commission of inquiry into the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Both measures are designed to demonstrate that a new majority exists and can act, even before a government is formed, and both would require the same cross-bloc cooperation that a coalition would need.

What Herzog will do next

November 4 consultations

President Isaac Herzog will begin formal consultations with Knesset parties on Wednesday, November 4, after Central Elections Committee chairman Justice Noam Sohlberg formally presents the certified results. The meetings will take place at the presidential residence in Jerusalem, and each party will be able to recommend the candidate it believes should be tasked with forming the next government.

Herzog has already urged the blocs to negotiate with an open mind and to do everything possible to avoid another election, particularly after the trauma of recent years. His role is not ceremonial in this phase: he must judge which candidate has the best realistic chance of assembling 61 seats, and that judgment will shape whether Eisenkot or Netanyahu receives the first mandate.

The 28-day mandate clock

The candidate Herzog selects will have 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension. If that attempt fails, Herzog may assign the task to another lawmaker, and failure across the board could ultimately trigger another election. Netanyahu will remain prime minister at the head of a caretaker government until a new government takes office, so there is no vacuum, but there is also no fresh mandate for major decisions.

The mandate does not automatically go to the leader of the largest party. That rule matters here because it leaves open the possibility that Eisenkot, despite trailing Netanyahu’s bloc by five seats, receives the first mandate if Herzog concludes that he has the better path to 61. Analysts have suggested Eisenkot could receive that first opportunity, with Netanyahu getting a subsequent chance if Eisenkot fails.

The other routes out of deadlock

Minority government

One route discussed by analysts is a minority government dependent on Arab-party support from outside the cabinet, along the lines of Tibi’s offer. Such a government could take office and legislate with Arab votes on confidence matters, while keeping its cabinet drawn from the Jewish-led opposition parties. Its survival would depend on continuous negotiation, and every controversial vote could become a test of its existence.

The precedent most often cited is Rabin’s government in the 1990s, which relied on Arab votes for the Oslo accords. Supporters of that model argue that it proved Arab-Jewish parliamentary cooperation can deliver historic decisions. Critics respond that the comparison understates today’s divisions over Gaza, security, and the conscription dispute, and that a minority government could collapse at the first serious crisis.

Unity deal or another election

A second route is a unity arrangement between the two main blocs, possibly including a rotating premiership, which Eisenkot has previously rejected. Such a deal would produce a broad and stable majority, but it would require Netanyahu and Eisenkot to share power after a campaign fought largely on the question of Netanyahu’s fitness to remain in office. For many opposition voters, that outcome would feel like a negation of the election itself.

The third route is another election, possibly in early 2027, if no candidate can assemble a majority. Analysts now describe prolonged deadlock as the likeliest near-term outcome unless one of the principal blocs changes its red lines on Arab-party participation, military conscription, or cooperation with Netanyahu. A fresh election would also carry its own risks: voters who turned out in record numbers might punish the politicians who failed to form a government, or they might simply reproduce the same deadlock.

Questions Still Unanswered

Will Eisenkot change course?

The central unanswered question is whether Eisenkot will accept the Joint List’s offer, in full or in part. He has not publicly embraced Arab support since the election, and his condition regarding Hamas remains unmet by the Joint List’s leadership. The Tel Aviv protests add public pressure, but they do not resolve the internal politics of his bloc, where Bennett and Liberman hold their own vetoes.

Equally uncertain is what the Arab parties themselves would demand in return for sustained support. Tibi’s statement rules out cabinet posts, but it does not settle policy questions on budgets, housing, policing in Arab communities, or the war in Gaza. Those negotiations, if they happen seriously, will determine whether outside support is a stable foundation or a short-lived experiment.

What happens if no one can govern?

If Herzog’s mandate process fails, Israel faces a familiar but unwelcome cycle: caretaker government, political paralysis, and eventually another election campaign. The costs of that cycle are not abstract. A caretaker government cannot pass a full budget easily, major security and economic decisions stall, and public trust, already strained by years of political instability, erodes further.

For now, the Tel Aviv rally stands as the first mass public intervention in the coalition process, a reminder that the election’s arithmetic belongs not only to party leaders but to the voters who produced it. Whether that intervention changes any leader’s mind will become clear only when Herzog begins his consultations on November 4 and the first mandate is handed out.

The following remain unconfirmed: the exact size of the October 31 Tel Aviv crowd, which reports describe only in the thousands; whether Eisenkot will accept Arab-party support or maintain his previous refusal; which candidate President Herzog will task with forming a government on or after November 4; whether any coalition or outside-support agreement will be reached, and on what terms; whether the Knesset speaker will be replaced or a state commission of inquiry into October 7 established; and whether the deadlock ends in a government or in another election.

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