Israel's president to meet Netanyahu and Eisenkot before choosing a candidate

Israeli-Palestinian parties hold record 19 seats as potential kingmakers

Israeli President Isaac Herzog was due to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Gadi Eisenkot on Thursday, with less than a week left before he was to decide which candidate had the best initial chance of building a stable coalition. In Israel’s political system, the otherwise largely ceremonial president makes that first selection. Neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot emerged from last month’s election with a clear path to power.

The Guardian described last month’s election as bitterly contested, and many observers considered it one of the most consequential for Israel in many decades. The result left Netanyahu’s coalition with 53 of the Knesset’s 120 seats, down from 68. Eisenkot, a former military general and chief of staff, led the Change bloc of Zionist parties, which held 48. Netanyahu, 77, did better than expected, and his Likud party won the most seats, but his nationalist-religious coalition lost its governing majority. The Guardian described that coalition as the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.

Turnout among Arab Israelis — Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who constitute 20% of the population — more than doubled to about 80%, and The Guardian said the shift transformed the political landscape. Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza had no vote. The Joint List held 11 seats, while Ra’am held eight. The Guardian described Ra’am as more conservative and Islamist. Together, the parties representing Israeli Palestinians held a record 19 seats and had a potential kingmaking role.

Yousef Jabareen, leader of Israel’s main Palestinian coalition, acknowledged disagreements with Eisenkot on many issues. He said Palestinian voters wanted change after facing intensified racism, discrimination, crime and exclusion under the current coalition. “We are not choosing between good and better but between what we see as bad and even worse,” Jabareen said, according to Israeli media. Last month, Jabareen told The Guardian that the first demand of Arab Israeli voters was to remove the Netanyahu government, particularly its most extreme members, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister.

Eisenkot put conditions on any potential coalition with Arab parties: recognizing that Israel is a Jewish state, accepting compulsory national service in either civil or military form, and denouncing Hamas as a terrorist organization. Jabareen and the Joint List suggested they would support an opposition from the outside with tactical voting in the Knesset. Ra’am said it would join a new government led by Eisenkot.

Herzog met delegations from Palestinian Israeli parties and other small parties and called on all parties to help avert another round of elections. “Any reasonable person need only look at the security and diplomatic challenges before us, at the changing region around us, and remember the issues tearing us apart from within, to understand that an immense responsibility rests upon us,” Herzog said.

Netanyahu remains prime minister in a caretaker government until a new coalition is formed or another election is held. Another election must be held if no candidate succeeds in forming a government.

The Guardian reported that Netanyahu, who faced the risk of losing power, invoked an investigation by election officials into possible vote tampering to cast doubt on the results and accused Israeli Palestinian-led parties of stealing the vote. Critics accused Netanyahu and his partners of trying to undermine the results; Netanyahu denied the accusation. Israel’s Central Election Committee said on Wednesday that the election’s integrity had not been compromised.

Committee head Noam Sohlberg, a supreme court justice, called on elected officials to protect public trust. “This is a real danger. One of the foundations of democracy is the peaceful transfer of power,” Sohlberg told Herzog at his residence on Wednesday. He called high voter turnout, including turnout among the Arab minority, a blessing.

The Guardian reported that Netanyahu’s allies on the far right, including Ben-Gvir, called for the immediate arrest and interrogation of Arab party leaders.