President Isaac Herzog continued consultations with the factions of the newly elected Knesset on Thursday, the second day of the formal process that decides who is first asked to form Israel’s next government. The talks, broadcast from the presidential compound in Jerusalem, began on Wednesday evening with the smallest factions, an order Herzog’s office set deliberately, and were scheduled to conclude with Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar faction and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud.
The recommendations split along bloc lines. Religious Zionism, Shas, Zehut and Otzma Yehudit recommended Netanyahu, while Yashar, the Democrats, B’Yachad and Ra’am recommended Eisenkot, and Yisrael Beytenu, led by Avigdor Liberman, also put Eisenkot forward. The arithmetic behind the split is unchanged since certification: Netanyahu’s bloc holds 53 of the 120 seats, the bloc led by Eisenkot holds 48, and Arab led parties hold 19, with 61 required for a majority. Under Israeli law the president assigns the mandate to the lawmaker judged most likely to form a government, not automatically to the leader of the largest party.
Herzog told the factions on Wednesday that there was no clear winner and that, if a repeat election is to be avoided, leaders would have to accept that not every campaign promise can be kept. Once he names a candidate, that lawmaker has 28 days to form a government, extendable by up to 14 days. Reporting on the timetable puts the deadline for assigning the mandate at November 11, and the newly elected Knesset is scheduled to hold its inaugural session on Tuesday, November 10.
This follows yesterday’s certification story, in which the Central Elections Committee confirmed the October 27 results after auditing 9,069 polling stations and rejected fraud claims. What is new today is the consultation round itself and the confirmed pattern of recommendations, which leaves Eisenkot dependent on parties that have not all committed to sitting in his government, and Netanyahu short of a majority even with every recommendation he has received. No mandate had been announced when these reports were published. Status: reported.