By: Tamar Stein – Israel365News.com
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.”
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