Israel’s President Herzog to name candidate to form government on Sunday

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog has said he will name a candidate to form the country’s next government by Sunday, after a majority of lawmakers backed opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Herzog made the announcement on Thursday after holding marathon talks with parties elected to the 120-seat parliament, known as the Knesset.

Some 67 lawmakers endorsed Eisenkot, a former military chief, while 46 backed Netanyahu.

In televised remarks at the end of the talks, Herzog said that although the “results of the consultations may appear clear”, there were “mutual vetoes between the blocs and within the blocs themselves” that make it difficult to say who has the best chance of assembling a governing coalition.

He said he would hold “personal talks with some of the party leaders” over the Israeli weekend, which runs Friday-Saturday, and make a pick on Sunday.

Israel’s October 27 election left neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot with a clear path to a parliamentary majority, handing Herzog the difficult task of choosing a candidate in a deeply divided country.

Netanyahu’s Likud won the most seats of any single party with 27 in the 120-seat Knesset, ⁠but his wider religious-nationalist coalition garnered only 53 in total.

Eisenkot’s alliance of four Jewish-led parties, which spans the political spectrum from centre-left to right, won 48 seats despite polls that had predicted a close race.

Two parties representing Israel’s Palestinian minority won an unprecedented 19 seats.

Eisenkot, like Netanyahu, has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties. Both of those parties nonetheless recommended him, giving him the support of a comfortable majority of lawmakers.

“We want to do things that we did not do in the past in order to remove this criminal government,” Ahmad Tibi, a senior member of the Joint List, which represents an alliance of Arab parties, told The Associated Press news agency.

Eisenkot’s party, Yashar, said his 67 recommendations were the most any candidate had received since 2015, and urged Herzog to give him the mandate “as soon as possible” so he could form a national emergency government.

Separately, Netanyahu suffered a setback on Thursday when United Torah Judaism, one of the two main ultra-Orthodox parties and a longtime ally, declined to recommend any candidate.

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

Yariv Oppenheimer, a member of the Democrats, a party in Eisenkot’s alliance, told Al Jazeera that he saw “no reason” Herzog would not choose Eisenkot on Sunday.

He said United Torah Judaism had signalled that its support was available for the right price, meaning that a good enough offer from Eisenkot could give him the numbers he needed.

“It’s very clear that Netanyahu doesn’t have a chance to establish a government at all,” he added.

Once nominated by Herzog, the candidate will have 28 days to try to forge a government, with a possible 14-day extension.

Netanyahu will remain prime minister in a caretaker government until a new coalition is formed, or through another election that must be held if no ⁠candidate succeeds.

Netanyahu, at risk of losing power, has seized on an investigation by election officials into possible vote tampering to cast doubt on the results, accusing Arab-led parties of stealing the vote.

Critics accuse Netanyahu and his partners of trying to undermine the results, which he denies.

Israel’s Central Election Committee said on ‌Wednesday that the election’s integrity had not been compromised. The head of the committee, Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohlberg, has called on Israel’s elected officials to protect public trust rather than shake it.

“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. High voter turnout, including among the Arab minority, was a blessing, he said.

Netanyahu’s allies on the far-right, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, have called for the immediate arrest and interrogation of Arab party leaders.