The general who buried his son in the war against Hamas now has six weeks to end the Netanyahu era, or send Israelis back to the ballot box. On Sunday evening, President Isaac Herzog handed Gadi Eisenkot, the former IDF chief of staff who leads the centrist Yashar party, the mandate to form Israel’s next government, after 67 of the 120 members of the incoming Knesset recommended him for prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu, who has led Israel for most of the past three decades, drew 46 recommendations. Eisenkot’s majority exists only on paper, and if he cannot turn it into a coalition, Israel faces the nightmare it escaped just four years ago: between April 2019 and November 2022, a deadlocked Knesset dragged Israelis to the polls five times. A failure now would make it the sixth election in seven years.

“Israel is in a challenging and fateful state of emergency,” Eisenkot declared at the ceremony at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, pointing to combat on multiple fronts, Israel’s sliding international standing, and what he called “one of the most vulnerable moments Israeli democracy has ever known.”

“With the mandate entrusted to me here today, I will lead the establishment of a national emergency government,” he said. “This will require creative and unconventional political acts. Israel does not have the privilege of wasting time or repeating endless rounds of elections.”

Eisenkot conceded that the road ahead is steep. “No one will be able to fulfill all the promises they made, and all of us will need to compromise,” he said. “That is also leadership, to know when to decide and set priorities.”

Without naming Netanyahu, Eisenkot appealed directly to members of the prime minister’s Likud party and to Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism. “If members of Likud and Religious Zionism truly believe that this is a time for unity, as they declared before the president, I cannot imagine any reason why they would not come forward and support a government under my leadership,” he said. He did not mention Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit, which his No. 2, former Shin Bet chief Yoram Cohen, has ruled out as a partner.

Herzog urged him to build a government that would last. “I hope with all my heart that whatever government is formed will lead to unity, connection, and healing among all segments of our people, for our very existence depends on it, and we have only one country,” the president said.

Netanyahu’s camp answered with a warning. Likud said the opposition intends to build “a dangerous government relying on supporters of terror,” pointing to the Arab parties among Eisenkot’s endorsers. Netanyahu said he is working to form a broad government “with our existing partners and any party willing to join us that does not support terrorism.”

The math of 61

No party has ever won a Knesset majority on its own, so every Israeli government is a coalition. After an election, the president consults each faction, and the lawmaker with the most recommendations receives the mandate. Eisenkot now has 28 days, until December 6, to sign coalition agreements with partners holding at least 61 seats. Herzog can extend the deadline by 14 days, to December 20.

If Eisenkot fails, the mandate is expected to pass to Netanyahu, who would get 28 days with no extension. If he fails as well, the Knesset has 21 days for any lawmaker to gather 61 signatures. If that last chance runs out, the Knesset dissolves, and Israelis return to the polls, for the sixth time since 2019. Netanyahu remains prime minister until a new government is sworn in.

Eisenkot’s 67 recommendations look like a majority on paper. In practice, they come from two camps that refuse to sit together. A four-party, 48-seat Jewish-led bloc includes Eisenkot’s Yashar, Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad, The Democrats, and Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu. A separate 19-seat bloc consists of the Arab parties, the Joint List, and Ra’am. Netanyahu’s right-wing and religious bloc holds 53 seats, and Likud remains the largest single party with 27.

Three of the four Jewish-led parties ruled out a government with the Arab parties during the campaign. The Arab parties have offered a way around that pledge. Ra’am leader Mansour Abbas backed Eisenkot for what he called “a government of hope and change,” and the Joint List signaled it would support him from outside the coalition without demanding ministries. Israeli law allows it: a new government needs only more votes for than against in its confidence vote, not 61 in favor.

That path runs straight into Liberman. The Yisrael Beytenu chairman has refused to back any minority government that survives on Arab votes or abstentions, and he has threatened to vote against one.

“Anyone in our camp who talks about a minority government is crowning Netanyahu within six months for another four-year term with at least 70 seats,” Liberman told Ynet. He accused lawmakers from the Arab parties of praising Hamas as a charitable organization and accusing Israel of genocide. “I want to make it absolutely clear: That will not happen,” he said. “I will not lend a hand to establishing such a government, which in my view would harm security and bring Netanyahu back to power.”

On Friday, Liberman stunned his own camp by signaling he would negotiate with the Haredi parties, including on draft exemptions, an issue he has fought for years. Some officials in Eisenkot’s bloc suspect that Liberman is waiting for Eisenkot and Netanyahu to fail so he can gather 61 signatures with Haredi support and claim the premiership himself. “I am not acting out of personal ambition to become prime minister at any cost,” Liberman responded. “It is an option, not an obsession.”

The Arab parties would stay outside an Eisenkot cabinet, lending their votes or abstentions without taking ministries. The Haredi parties are the real negotiation. Eisenkot has said he would sit with them. “Of course. I sit with anyone who strengthens the State of Israel,” he said in a video earlier this year. Political sources told The Jerusalem Post they expect him to offer generous arrangements on the enlistment of yeshiva students, along with budgets, to bring them in.

The two Haredi parties are split. Haredi sources describe United Torah Judaism as the likelier partner, though UTJ may demand, as it did of Netanyahu, that a draft law pass all three Knesset readings before talks begin. Shas chairman Aryeh Deri has reportedly ruled out joining an opposition-led government without Likud, yet Rabbi Moshe Maya of the Shas Council of Torah Sages said there is “no reason to rule out coalition negotiations with Eisenkot.” Their hesitation shows in the numbers: Netanyahu’s bloc holds 53 seats, but only 46 lawmakers recommended him. Shas and Religious Zionism backed Netanyahu in the consultations, while UTJ appears to have recommended no one.

That leaves Eisenkot with three roads, each blocked. A minority government depends on the Arab parties and on Liberman’s acquiescence. A coalition with the Haredi parties would contradict Yashar’s central campaign promise to end blanket draft exemptions. A unity government with Likud founders on Netanyahu himself, since Eisenkot has vowed not to serve under him and Netanyahu has shown no sign of stepping aside. If every road stays closed, Israel heads to a spring election, and many analysts expect Netanyahu to perform better in a repeat vote.

What Eisenkot stands for

Eisenkot has set four conditions for any party seeking to join his government: recognition of Israel as a Jewish, democratic, liberal, and egalitarian state; commitment to the values of the Declaration of Independence; mandatory military, national, or civilian service for every citizen; and recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organization whose military and governing power in Gaza must be dismantled.

On the Palestinian question, Eisenkot has rejected the two-state solution, the creation of an unprecedented Palestinian state inside Israel’s borders, militarized and ethnically cleansed of Jews, with its exclusively Muslim capital in Jerusalem, centered on Judaism’s holiest site, the Temple Mount. “The two-state solution is a grave mistake,” he told Israel Hayom in August. He has made clear he will not move toward a Palestinian state in a first term. He has also told The Jerusalem Post that if the only alternatives are Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, he would prefer the PA.

His record on Judea and Samaria draws fire from the right. During the campaign, he toured Samaria, visiting Ariel and meeting Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan. He has also condemned what he calls “settler violence” and warned that government policy in Judea and Samaria is damaging Israel’s international legitimacy. After Yoram Cohen discussed Judea and Samaria policy on Channel 12’s “Meet the Press” during the campaign, Finance Minister Smotrich warned that the Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria would be endangered if the opposition came to power.

On security, Eisenkot names Iran as Israel’s foremost threat. He calls for stronger ties with Washington, the expansion of Israel’s peace agreements, and a state commission of inquiry into the October 7 massacre and the management of the war that followed.

At home, Yashar’s signature issue is ending blanket draft exemptions for Haredi yeshiva students. “We cannot accept the current reality of 37,000 deserters and 45,000 draft evaders,” Eisenkot said earlier this year, calling for “a realistic plan” amid the IDF’s manpower shortage after more than two years of war. The party proposes cutting state funding for Haredi schools that refuse to teach the core curriculum of math, English, and Hebrew to 25 percent, while fully funding those that do. Its platform also promises relief from the cost of living, with economic support aimed at working Israelis, young people, and those who serve.

From Eilat to the General Staff

Gadi Eisenkot was born in Tiberias in 1960, the second of four children of Meir and Esther Eisenkot, Jewish immigrants from the Moroccan port town of Safi. He grew up in Eilat, a working-class town on Israel’s southern periphery, far from the centers of power in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

He was drafted into the Golani Brigade in 1978 and rose to command it in 1997. He went on to serve as military secretary to Prime Minister Ehud Barak, commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, head of Northern Command, and deputy chief of staff. As head of Northern Command after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, he formulated the “Dahiya doctrine” of overwhelming force against Hezbollah’s strongholds. In 2015, he became the IDF’s 21st chief of staff, the first of Moroccan origin, serving until 2019.

If he succeeds, Eisenkot will become Israel’s first Mizrahi prime minister. Jews whose families came from North Africa and the Middle East make up roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population, yet every prime minister since David Ben-Gurion has been of Ashkenazi or European descent. His heritage became a campaign issue after pro-Netanyahu broadcaster Yinon Magal called him “a monkey, with a Mizrahi Moroccan name,” controlled by “Ashkenazi elites.” Yashar responded with billboards accusing Netanyahu and Magal of “disparaging Mizrahim,” a pointed appeal to voters who have long formed the backbone of Likud.

Eisenkot entered politics in 2022 with Benny Gantz’s National Unity party. After October 7, he joined the emergency government as a minister and observer in the war cabinet. He resigned after eight months, blaming Netanyahu for failing to set a comprehensive strategy for the war, and later broke with Gantz to found Yashar, Hebrew for “upright.”

The war took a heavy toll on his family. On December 7, 2023, his youngest son, Master Sgt. (res.) Gal Meir Eisenkot, 25, was killed when a bomb exploded in a tunnel shaft in Jabaliya in northern Gaza. Eisenkot learned of his son’s death while observing operations at a division headquarters near the Gaza border. His nephew, Sgt. Maor Cohen Eisenkot, 19, fell in battle in Khan Yunis the next day. A second nephew, Capt. Yogev Pazy, was killed in November 2024.

Former Military Intelligence chief Tamir Hayman recalled what Eisenkot told him when the war began: he intended to manage it as though his son were at the front of the campaign and his daughter were held hostage in Gaza.