Joint List says it will back Eisenkot to form Israel’s next government

The Joint List alliance of Arab-led parties says it will back Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot to form a new government after last week’s election.

“The Joint List announced today, Thursday, that it will inform the President of the State, Isaac Herzog, this evening of its decision to recommend that Gadi Eisenkot be tasked with forming the government,” the alliance said in a statement.

Arab-led parties won a record 19 seats in Israel’s 120-seat parliament in last week’s general election, a result that could give them significant influence over the formation of the next government.

Once the Joint List’s 11 lawmakers formally submit their recommendation, Eisenkot is expected to have the backing of 67 lawmakers, exceeding the 61-seat majority threshold in the Knesset.

Earlier, Ra’am, an Arab-led party with eight seats, said it would also recommend Eisenkot.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc with 53 seats may not yield 53 endorsements, as Degel HaTorah, which holds four of United Torah Judaism’s seven seats, said it would recommend neither candidate.

The ultra-Orthodox faction broke with Netanyahu over his coalition’s failure to pass legislation exempting Haredi men from military service, The Times of Israel reported.

Netanyahu has also claimed repeatedly and without evidence that Arab parties committed fraud during the elections with foreign backing.

The prime minister and his Likud party have cited a handful of cases, including the arrests of three political activists who allegedly bribed voters before polls opened. They are suspected of connections with the Ra’am party, although the party denies any involvement.

Netanyahu and Likud also suggested that the opposition bloc joining with Arab-led parties would be treasonous. In a statement after the vote, Likud warned that Zionist parties cooperating with the Arab bloc would be “dangerous to Israel”.

Israel’s Central Elections Committee certified the results of the election on Wednesday after finding no evidence of fraud.

President Herzog has also accepted the results and begun consultations with party leaders on whom to task with forming the next government.

He also backed investigating suspected interference but warned against smearing voters who are Palestinian citizens of Israel, saying he had “great respect” for the country’s Palestinian minority, which makes up about 20 percent of the population.

“I condemn the coarseness and racist expressions that we have heard recently,” he said.

On Wednesday, the president said he had met representatives of the Religious Zionism and Zehut, Shas and Yisrael Beytenu factions.

In a post on X, Herzog said he “received their recommendations regarding the identity of the Knesset member upon whom the task of forming the government should be assigned”.

Herzog added that talks would also continue on Thursday.

Once the consultations end, Herzog will choose the candidate he considers best placed to assemble a coalition, almost certainly Netanyahu or Eisenkot. He has several days to announce his decision, after which the nominee will have 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension.

If neither man succeeds, Israel would hold another election early next year.

Reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, Al Jazeera’s Nour Odeh said that if Eisenkot is able to form a government, then he will become Israel’s next prime minister and Netanyahu will likely be the head of the opposition.

“It is up to Gadi Eisenkot to do what he promised, to oust Benjamin Netanyahu. And to do that, he needs to have 61 votes in the Knesset, which means that he needs the votes of the Palestinian-Israeli parties, parties that he does not want to partner up with,” she said.

“But he will most likely have to reach some sort of deal, for [the Palestinian-Israeli parties] to abstain at the very least, to make sure that his government is sworn in and a new chapter in Israeli politics is able to begin,” she added.