Israel’s president taps opposition candidate Eisenkot to form government

On Saturday night, Israeli President Isaac Herzog informed the nation that he had selected opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot as the first choice to form a governing coalition after the country's elections on October 27. Eisenkot, a former military chief and primary challenger to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had led a coalition of parties aiming to remove Israel's longest-serving premier.

While neither Eisenkot nor Netanyahu secured a clear majority in the vote, representatives from most of Israel’s major parties advised the president to entrust Eisenkot with the task of assembling a new government. The announcement, expected on Sunday, came shortly after Netanyahu called for a "national unity government" in a video statement and expressed concerns about "hastily swearing in a government with terrorist supporters," referring to the Arab-led parties.

Netanyahu and his allies have often portrayed the Arab-led parties as a threat to national security, while Eisenkot has expressed a willingness to cooperate with them under specific conditions, including labeling Hamas as a terrorist organization. Eisenkot's Yashar party harshly criticized Netanyahu's video statement, urging his Likud party members to distance themselves from "radical parties," referring to the more extreme factions in his religious-nationalist base.