Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, will task opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a new coalition government, the BBC reported, after neither Eisenkot's bloc nor Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's secured a majority in the Knesset in last week's election.
Eisenkot will have 28 days to try to form an administration, with a potential 14-day extension. "Now is the time to form a national emergency government. I will do everything to ensure we are worthy," the former military chief wrote on X.
Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party and its far-right and ultra-Orthodox allies won 53 seats in the 120-seat parliament, while Eisenkot's centrist Yashar party and three other Jewish opposition parties in his bloc won 48. Two Arab-led alliances, the United Arab List and the Joint List, took an unprecedented 19 seats after a surge in Arab turnout, positioning them as potential kingmakers, though all but one of the Jewish parties pledged before the polls not to work with them.
Herzog's office said Eisenkot received 67 recommendations for the premiership and Netanyahu 46. No party has ever won an outright majority in Israel, so every government has been a coalition, and the president has broad discretion not to choose the leader of the largest party. In 2020, after three deadlocked elections, Netanyahu and his centrist rival Benny Gantz agreed a power-sharing deal in which the leadership rotated.