Herzog Tasks Eisenkot With Forming Israel’s Next Government as Netanyahu Loses the Mandate After Inconclusive Election

Introduction

Israel’s president has chosen a new man to try to form the country’s next government. Isaac Herzog told former army chief Gadi Eisenkot on Saturday evening that he would receive the mandate to build a coalition, passing over Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister who has led Israel for longer than anyone in its history. The decision, reported by Al Jazeera and confirmed by the president’s office, ends a week of consultations in which neither side in the October 27 election could claim a majority, and it opens a 28-day race against the clock that will decide whether Israel gets a new government or heads back to the polls. The Eisenkot Herzog mandate Israel government November 2026 story is now the central question in Israeli politics.

1. The decision Herzog made on Saturday evening

1.1 What the president’s office announced

The announcement came on Saturday evening, November 7, after days of consultations between Herzog and the leaders of the parties elected to the 120-seat Knesset. According to the president’s office, Herzog informed Eisenkot of his decision personally, and a spokesperson confirmed that the formal handover of the mandate would take place at a ceremony at the President’s Residence in West Jerusalem on Sunday. The statement said the decision followed the round of consultations with Knesset factions and further inquiries with various figures in the political system over the past few days. Herzog had accepted the certified results of the October 27 vote on Wednesday and begun the consultations the same day, holding talks with party leaders on Wednesday and Thursday before taking the weekend to weigh his choice. The president’s role in this process is set by law and convention: after an election, the president consults every faction and tasks the lawmaker he considers best placed to assemble a coalition, and that tasking is the formal starting gun for government formation.

1.2 How the ceremony on Sunday will work

The formal mandate ceremony is scheduled for Sunday, November 8, at 5 p.m. at the President’s Residence, according to the president’s office. At the ceremony, Herzog will formally hand Eisenkot the mandate to form a government, and the 28-day clock will begin. The ceremony is largely symbolic — the decision itself was already made and communicated on Saturday evening — but it matters because it fixes the deadline in law. From the moment the mandate is conferred, Eisenkot has 28 days to present a government that can win the Knesset’s confidence. The president may extend that period by 14 days if Eisenkot asks and Herzog agrees the talks are progressing, giving a maximum of six weeks. The ceremony will be watched closely for any remarks from either man about the shape of the government Eisenkot intends to build, and for the first signals about which parties he will approach first.

2. The numbers behind the mandate

2.1 Sixty-seven endorsements against forty-six

The decisive factor in Herzog’s choice was the count from the consultations. Sixty-seven of the Knesset’s 120 members endorsed Eisenkot to form the next government, while only 46 backed Netanyahu. The gap of 21 lawmakers was wide enough to make the choice clear, even though neither man commands a majority bloc of his own. Eisenkot’s 67 endorsements included the lawmakers of the Arab-led parties, which won a record 19 seats in the October election and whose support proved decisive in the tally. The consultation figures were reported by Al Jazeera and by the president’s office, which published the tally after the talks ended on Thursday. The numbers explain why the decision, while politically momentous, was not a surprise to those who had followed the consultations: the arithmetic had pointed toward Eisenkot for days, and the question was whether Herzog would follow the endorsements or weigh other considerations, such as which candidate could actually assemble a working coalition.

2.2 The 61-seat threshold and the arithmetic

A government in Israel needs the support of at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 members — an absolute majority — to take office and survive. The October election produced three blocs and no majority for any of them. Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious alliance won 53 seats. The four Jewish-led parties backing Eisenkot hold 48 seats. The Arab-led parties hold 19 seats, split between the Joint List with 11 and Ra’am with eight. Adding Eisenkot’s 48 to the Arab-led 19 gives 67, the same number that endorsed him in the consultations, but that arithmetic is not the same as a coalition, because Eisenkot has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties. That leaves him needing to win over parties from outside his own bloc, and the only route to exactly 61 without them runs through the two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas. Israeli law does, however, allow a candidate to become prime minister with fewer than 61 seats if the proposed government wins a parliamentary confidence vote, a provision that could give Eisenkot room to govern with a minority government backed from outside by parties that do not join it.

3. Who Gadi Eisenkot is

3.1 From army chief to party leader

Gadi Eisenkot is a retired military chief who served as the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces before entering politics. He led the centrist Yashar party into the October 27 election as its chairman and as the main challenger to Netanyahu, building his campaign around the argument that Israel needed new leadership after years under the same prime minister. His military background is central to his public image: he is presented by his supporters as a steady, security-minded figure, and his time as chief of staff gives him credibility on the defence and security questions that dominate Israeli politics. At the same time, his move from the military into party politics is recent, and the task of forming a government will be his first test as a coalition builder. The negotiations ahead will require him to hold together parties with very different views on religion, the economy and the future of the Palestinian territories, and to do so while Netanyahu, a veteran of coalition politics, watches from the opposition benches.

3.2 The Yashar bloc and the October campaign

Eisenkot’s Yashar party led a bloc of four Jewish-led opposition parties into the election, and together they won 48 seats. The campaign was fought in the shadow of the war and its aftermath, and of the argument over whether Netanyahu should remain in office. In the days after the vote, the leaders of the Jewish-led opposition alliance met in the city of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, in their first joint meeting since the election, and agreed to back Eisenkot as prime minister, promising to replace Netanyahu’s government as quickly as possible. The meeting brought together Eisenkot, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, Yair Golan of the Democrats and Yair Lapid, who heads Yesh Atid. In a joint statement, the leaders said all their parties would recommend Eisenkot to Herzog and that negotiating teams would immediately begin drafting policy guidelines and coalition agreements. That early unity gave Eisenkot the 48-seat base from which he now starts, but the agreement was reached before the hardest questions — who joins the government and on what terms — had to be answered.

4. The election that produced no winner

4.1 October 27 and the split Knesset

The general election on October 27, 2026, left Israel without a clear winner. Netanyahu and his allies lost the majority they had held in the 120-member parliament, while no rival bloc won one either. The result was a Knesset split into three parts, with the two largest blocs each short of the 61 seats needed to govern and the balance held by parties that neither side could easily bring into a coalition. The outcome reflected a deeply divided electorate: voters had delivered a verdict against the incumbent’s majority without delivering a majority to anyone else. The election commission later rejected fraud claims raised by Netanyahu’s Likud party and confirmed the results, removing one possible challenge to the outcome and clearing the way for Herzog to begin the consultations that ended with Saturday’s decision. The deadlock was not an accident of the electoral system alone; it was the product of a political landscape in which the old left-right divide has been overlaid by arguments over the war, the ultra-Orthodox community’s role and the place of Arab citizens in Israeli politics.

4.2 The record Arab-led showing

The most striking feature of the October result was the performance of the Arab-led parties, which won a record 19 seats. The Joint List took 11 seats and Ra’am eight, giving parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel a share of the Knesset larger than ever before. Their showing made them kingmakers in the consultations: without their 19 endorsements, Eisenkot’s tally would have been 48, barely ahead of Netanyahu’s 46, and Herzog’s choice would have been far harder to make. The Joint List said it would back Eisenkot to form the next government, and Ra’am, a major Arab-led party, also said it would recommend him. That support came with a complication that now sits at the centre of the coalition arithmetic. Eisenkot has ruled out bringing the Arab-led parties into government, which means the parties whose endorsements helped him win the mandate will not sit in his cabinet. Their backing was given on the understanding that they would support him from outside, and whether that outside support can be sustained through a full term of government is one of the open questions of the weeks ahead.

5. The coalition puzzle Eisenkot must solve

5.1 The ultra-Orthodox path to exactly 61

The clearest route to a majority for Eisenkot runs through the two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah Judaism and Shas. Winning over both would give him exactly 61 seats — his own bloc’s 48 plus their 13 — the minimum needed to govern. That arithmetic is exact and unforgiving: losing even one of the two parties would leave him short, and it would leave him dependent on the Arab-led parties he has ruled out or on a minority government that wins a confidence vote with outside support. The ultra-Orthodox parties are also the parties whose relationship with Netanyahu has been closest, and their decision will be the most closely watched of the negotiations. There was already a sign of movement during the consultations: United Torah Judaism refrained from endorsing any candidate, a decision reported as a major fracture in its long-standing alliance with Netanyahu. Whether that refusal to endorse Netanyahu turns into a willingness to join an Eisenkot government is not yet known, and it will depend on what Eisenkot can offer on the questions that matter most to the ultra-Orthodox community, including military service exemptions and funding for religious schools.

5.2 The Arab parties he has ruled out

Eisenkot’s decision to rule out a government with the Arab-led parties is the single most consequential choice of his coalition strategy, and it shapes everything that follows. On the numbers, a government of his 48 seats plus the Arab-led 19 would command 67 seats, a comfortable majority, and it would reflect the endorsements that won him the mandate. Politically, however, such a coalition would be a first in Israeli history and would face fierce opposition from within his own bloc and from the right. Eisenkot has chosen instead to seek a majority without them, which means he must win over the ultra-Orthodox parties or govern as a minority with Arab support from outside the coalition. The Arab-led parties, for their part, have said they will back him to form a government, and their 19 seats give them leverage over any government that depends on their votes in the Knesset, whether or not they sit in the cabinet. The tension between the arithmetic and the politics — between the majority that is available and the majority that is acceptable to his partners — is the puzzle Eisenkot has 28 days to solve.

6. What happens if the talks fail

6.1 The 28-day clock and the extension

The mandate gives Eisenkot 28 days to form a coalition, with a possible 14-day extension if the president agrees the negotiations are making progress. The clock starts at Sunday’s ceremony, so the first deadline falls in early December, and the extended deadline, if granted, would fall in mid-December. Those weeks will be filled with negotiations over the division of ministries, the government’s policy guidelines and the compromises each party must make to join. The negotiating teams of the opposition alliance have already begun drafting policy guidelines and coalition agreements, according to the joint statement issued after the Herzliya meeting, which gives Eisenkot a head start. But the history of Israeli coalition talks suggests the hardest bargains come last, when the parties that hold the balance of power extract their price. If Eisenkot cannot assemble a government within the time allowed, he must return the mandate to the president, and Herzog will have to decide whether to task another candidate — most likely Netanyahu — or to move toward dissolving the Knesset.

6.2 A new election and a caretaker Netanyahu

If no government is formed after the mandate has been tried, the Knesset will be dissolved and an entirely new election will be called within 90 days. That would mean Israel returning to the polls in early 2027, less than four months after the October vote, and it would mean Netanyahu staying on as caretaker prime minister throughout the campaign and until a new government is formed. The prospect of another election is the fallback that hangs over the negotiations, and it gives every party an incentive to reach a deal: voters who have just delivered an inconclusive result are unlikely to welcome being asked to vote again so soon, and the parties know that a second election could punish those seen as blocking a government. For Netanyahu, a failed Eisenkot mandate would be a reprieve, returning him to the centre of the process and giving him a second chance to build the coalition he could not build after October 27. For Eisenkot, the stakes are equally clear: failure would hand his rival the initiative and raise questions about whether the opposition’s unity can survive a second campaign.

7. Reactions at home and abroad

7.1 The opposition’s united front

The opposition leaders who backed Eisenkot have presented a united front since the election, and their joint statement after the Herzliya meeting was designed to show Herzog that Eisenkot could command a bloc. The leaders said their parties would all recommend Eisenkot and that negotiating teams would immediately begin work on policy guidelines and coalition agreements, a signal that the alliance was already functioning as a government-in-waiting. That unity will now be tested by the negotiations themselves, in which each party’s priorities will compete for space in the coalition agreement. Bennett, Liberman, Golan and Lapid lead parties with different positions on the economy, on religion and state, and on the future of the territories, and the compromises Eisenkot must make to keep them together may be as difficult as the bargains he must strike with parties outside the bloc. The bloc’s public message so far has been that its members are united by the aim of replacing Netanyahu’s government as quickly as possible, and the coming weeks will show whether that shared aim is enough to hold them together when the details of power-sharing are on the table.

7.2 Netanyahu’s camp and the fraud claims

For Netanyahu, Saturday’s decision is the most serious setback of his political career. He is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, and the loss of the mandate to a rival he has dominated for years marks a sharp reversal of fortune. His Likud party challenged the election result after the vote, raising fraud claims that the election commission rejected when it confirmed the results, and the rejection removed the last procedural obstacle to Herzog’s consultations. Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats, the largest single bloc in the Knesset, and his supporters argue that the leader of the largest bloc should have the first chance to form a government. Herzog’s decision to follow the endorsement count rather than the size of the largest bloc is a reminder that the president’s task is to find the candidate best placed to assemble a majority, not simply to reward the biggest party. Netanyahu now waits as caretaker prime minister while his rival negotiates, and his camp will be watching for any sign that the talks are faltering, ready to argue that the mandate should have been his.

8. What remains unconfirmed and what to watch next

8.1 The questions only the negotiations can answer

Much of what will decide Israel’s next government is still unknown, and the negotiations of the coming weeks will answer questions that no statement from the president’s office can settle. It is not yet known whether United Torah Judaism and Shas will join an Eisenkot government, or on what terms they would do so, and the price they demand on military service and religious funding will be central to the talks. It is not known whether the Arab-led parties will support a government they do not join, or for how long, and whether their outside support would survive the first difficult vote in the Knesset. It is not known which ministries Eisenkot will offer to Bennett, Liberman, Golan and Lapid, or whether the opposition alliance can agree on policy guidelines covering the economy, the war’s aftermath and the future of the territories. And it is not known whether Netanyahu will seek to return to the process if Eisenkot fails, or whether he would instead accept a role in a unity arrangement. None of these questions has an answer yet, and each will be settled only in the rooms where the coalition is negotiated.

8.2 What to watch next

The first thing to watch is Sunday’s ceremony at 5 p.m., and any remarks Eisenkot makes about his intentions as he receives the mandate. The second is the opening of formal negotiations in the days that follow, and the first reports of which parties are talking to whom and what is being offered. The third is the position of the ultra-Orthodox parties, whose choice will decide whether Eisenkot can reach 61 seats without the Arab-led parties. The fourth is the reaction of the Arab-led parties to a government they support but do not join, and whether their backing holds through the confidence vote. And the fifth is the clock itself: as the 28 days run down, the pressure on every party to compromise will grow, and the question of whether Herzog grants a 14-day extension will become the clearest signal of whether a government is close or the talks are failing. The coming weeks will provide the answers.

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