What options Netanyahu and Eisenkot have after Israel’s deadlocked election

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is tasked with tapping the candidate best positioned to form a coalition, has said a new vote must be avoided at all costs.

Of the four parties in Eisenkot’s camp, the least receptive to an overture from Netanyahu would be the left-wing Democrats, led by Yair Golan, which won eight seats.

Netanyahu’s former ally turned fierce critic Avigdor Lieberman, whose right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party won seven seats, would also likely dismiss the prospect out of hand.

Lieberman said on Thursday (Oct 29) that “the only conceivable coalition” was one without Netanyahu, though he suggested the rest of the premier’s party would be tolerated.

The stance of Naftali Bennett’s centre-right Together party, which won 12 seats, is less clear.

Bennett had initially suggested he would not oppose an alliance with Netanyahu’s camp under certain conditions, notably the immediate creation of a commission of inquiry into the Oct 7, 2023 attacks. But he later backtracked and insisted his remarks had been misconstrued.

Finally, the possibility of an alliance with Eisenkot’s Yashar party, which nabbed 21 seats, seems remote given the ex-general built his campaign around promises to remove Netanyahu, who he said was unfit to lead.

There is a recent precedent for unlikely power-sharing scenarios. In 2020, Netanyahu and centrist Benny Gantz overcame their deep antipathy to strike a deal to rotate the prime ministership, but the partnership collapsed after a year.

Eisenkot has repeatedly ruled out such an arrangement, saying before the vote: “There will be no form of rotation in the post of prime minister. There will be only one prime minister, and it will be me.”

Outside the opposition camp, there remains the highly improbable option of Netanyahu turning to Arab-majority lists, with their 19 seats.

The prime minister spent the campaign casting them as bogeymen, and in the days since the vote has accused them of electoral fraud.

But nothing is out of the question when it comes to Netanyahu, a canny political operator who reached out to Arab parties in 2015 and 2021.

AN EISENKOT-LED GOVERNMENT

By refusing to deliver a majority to Netanyahu’s camp, the Israeli people “have chosen change”, Eisenkot proclaimed on election night.

With his camp holding 48 seats, and having ruled out a power-sharing deal with Netanyahu, Eisenkot has two options going forward: establishing a minority government supported from the outside by other parties, or attempting to broaden his coalition by bringing in Arab lawmakers or defectors from the other camp.