Joint List backs Eisenkot, handing him a majority of recommendations
Israel’s Joint List said it would tell President Herzog on Thursday evening that it recommends Gadi Eisenkot to form the next government, which Al Jazeera calculates would give him 67 recommendations, above the 61-seat majority, once its eleven members are counted. Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am has also backed Mr Eisenkot, while Degel HaTorah’s four members are recommending no one, so Benjamin Netanyahu’s 53-seat bloc may not deliver 53 endorsements.
The arithmetic follows Wednesday’s certification of the result and the opening of Mr Herzog’s consultations, where the Times of Israel counted at least 56 recommendations for Mr Eisenkot against 53 for Mr Netanyahu before the Joint List declared. A recommendation is not a coalition: the Arab-led lists took a record 19 seats, but all but one Jewish party pledged before the election not to govern with them, and the Joint List has said that if it supports a government from outside it does not want to give it “a safety net only to bring it down”. Mr Abbas, pressed on whether he regards Hamas as a terrorist organisation, declined, saying he had “an unequivocal answer” but asked to be left “this space to be a bridge”, calling it “a matter of life or death” for his family’s safety. Whoever the president designates has 28 days, extendable by 14, to assemble a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Watch for Mr Herzog’s choice and for whether Mr Eisenkot can build a coalition without formally including the Arab parties.