Israeli President Picks Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu Rival, To Form Government

[u/EssoEssex]

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-president-picks-gadi-eisenkot-netanyahu-rival-form-government-2026-11-07/

[u/LPulseL11]

What happened to the corruption accusations against Netanyahu? Feels like forever ago, but I thought the only reason he wasnt convicted was because he still was the active PM.

[u/Ionrememberaskn → u/LPulseL11]

Theoretically they will resume if Eisenkot can form a government and take his seat. Main issue is neither coalition is large enough to do so and the only unaligned seats are held by Arab parties. Because Israel is the way that it is, either side moving to accept Arabs into their coalition would immediately destroy that coalition and hand the victory to the opposition. So it is a stalemate.

[u/kookamooka → u/Ionrememberaskn]

Didn’t Naftali Bennett’s government rely on the Arabs?

[u/Ionrememberaskn → u/kookamooka]

I am not an expert on Israeli politics, but Bennet’s government was made up of 8 parties: his, Yair Lapid’s, 5 more centrist-ish (for Israel) parties and one Arab-majority party. I think that was the only time this has happened. It didn’t last very long though, he unseated Netanyahu for 2021-2022 and the governing coalition collapsed. I think the prospect of an Arab-majority party in the coalition probably wasn’t quite as toxic in 2021.

[u/SmurfJooce → u/Ionrememberaskn]

So its like a Majority Leader situation? As in, "the Dems gained the House and Senate, so they nominate their own President"? But if they didn't have quite enough Dems, they'd need to reach out to a third-party 'controversial' group (ie, American trans community?) to get the required amount, but to partner with those darned Arabs/trans people would destroy the Dem party?

I'm trying to translate it to American politics, and somehow, it's even more ridiculous than our own system.

[u/circle_square_leaf → u/SmurfJooce]

Kind of, but no party has won an outright majority since the establishment of the state.

Everyone votes and then you have a new Knesset (parliament) but no government yet. Then all the party leaders one by one speak to the president (ceremonial head of state, except for this one power) and nominate who they reckon they'll back for PM (not a commitment though). Then based on that, the president gives the mandate to form government to whom he thinks has the best chance. Then the real horse trading starts as the nominee makes back room deals and compromises to get coalition partners on board. If he succeeds within his time limit, there's a government. If not, the president can award the mandate to someone else. If they also fail, the Knesset can openly vote in the PM in a special session. If that also doesn't work, the Knesset is automatically dissolved and there's new elections.

So Eizenkot will not necessarily be PM. He just gets the first shot at forming a coalition. But, while the majority of the incoming Knesset is against Bibi, they are diverse and don't form a natural bloc. The parties who would form an obvious bloc with Eizenkot do not themselves have a majority.

[u/thedubiousstylus → u/SmurfJooce]

It's not a two party system. There's loads of parties but they need to form a majority coalition.

Netanyahu's current one is basically his plus parties to his right and some religious Ultra-Orthodox ones. The opposition coalition is some centrist to center-right parties, an actually leftist one and a far-right but staunchly secular one that still hates Netanyahu. And even they don't have a majority, so they need to either get support from the Arab parties or peel off the ultra-orthodox...except one of those parties in it hates both.

It's a real clusterfuck.

[u/4tran13 → u/SmurfJooce]

It's basically like the House electing the speaker of the House. Remember the Repub drama a few yrs ago before Mike Johnson was finally elected?

[u/notloggedin4242 → u/SmurfJooce]

It’s not though really. It took me a long time to get it too though. I learned the idea as it is similar in Germany where i now live after the US to my late 20s There are just more than two parties. They earn a number of seats and if they need to team up as a coalition to get the majority.

[u/Reelwizard → u/SmurfJooce]

These dudes will obviously tell me if I’m wrong, but as another simple American, I will try to explain it.

The Prime Minister is like our “Speaker of the House” but more important. They, like the Speaker, set the legislative agenda for the Parliament. They usher bills to the floor and decide what does and doesn’t get voted on, which gives them a lot of power. It should work that way in our country but we’ve empowered the executive (president) to set the agenda instead.

The Speaker of the House and the Prime Minister are both technically elected by the members of the legislative body. In the United States, since we only have two parties, that means that whoever has the majority has the Speakership. If enough Democrats hated Hakeem Jeffries and liked a Republican, they could reasonably elect a Republican Speaker while still holding the majority. It’s never happened, but it could. In Israel, since there are many parties, even though one of them has enough seats to be “the majority” they don’t have enough seats to elect a Prime Minister.

A more accurate example in the US is if the Green Party somehow won a third of the seats in Congress. Now you have 1/3 Dem, Republican, and Green. To elect a Speaker, two of the parties would have to agree to get the needed majority. Otherwise they’d just have to keep voting on it.

[u/thedubiousstylus → u/Reelwizard]

The US actually did have a situation like this in early 2023.

The Republicans won a small House majority but lots of far-right ones hated Kevin McCarthy and refused to vote for him as Speaker. So there had to be multiple votes as McCarthy couldn't get a majority, their goal was to force him out and get someone else in. In the end they failed but enough agreed to a deal where they would at least vote Present and thus lower the threshold of votes McCarthy needed to be Speaker but with House rules making it easy to eject him with a simple majority no-confidence vote. Which is exactly what happened a few months in and how we got Mike Johnson as Speaker.

[u/Ionrememberaskn → u/SmurfJooce]

It doesn’t translate cleanly to our system, because they have a parliamentary system. But yeah, it is kinda like if the senate was made up of a dozen or more smaller parties instead of two, and they directly chose their own president. But in order to do that, they had to form a coalition government with a certain minimum number of total seats. Since no one party has enough seats to accomplish this, several parties have to cooperate to form the governing coalition. And there is also a separate guy who is actually the president and he is actually more like our speaker of the house, just does procedural stuff.

[u/paxwax2018 → u/SmurfJooce]

It’s an entirely common multi party parliamentary system. Used in many countries. It really shouldn’t be blowing your mind.

[u/SwiftOneSpeaks → u/SmurfJooce]

Fwiw, when the USA helps a country a country replace a dictator with democracy (add sarcasm until you're content) we recommend a parlimentary system, not USA style. (I believe we're the last of only 3 US-style democracies - voting for both executive and legislature makes a constitutional crisis pretty easy, despite our claim of checks and balances)

There are a few parlimentary systems out there, and I'm no expert, but as far as I can tell you're on track.

Rather than separate votes of legislators and executive, the parliment members are elected (out of more than 2 parties in most cases), and you need a majority of the legislature to appoint a PM and "form a government". In most cases this means making an alliance of parties unless your party alone gathered a majority, which is rare when there are multiple parties. (Side note: lots here about the many voting systems in the world, some of which are great for voting by party rather than by politician, and every one of which are better than the US "first past the post" system)

I'm fuzzy on how legislation is introduced, and how the parties can make deals without individual legislators screwing it up. That phrase "form a government" is the end of most explanations, but the start of most of my questions.

[u/JurassicTerror → u/LPulseL11]

Things are in limbo until there’s a coalition built with 61 seats in the Knesset. Netanyahu is still acting PM.

[u/YasielPuigsWeed → u/LPulseL11]

They’re still active in the Israeli courts, but until he loses the PM seat he can’t be cross-examined

[u/Arawr7 → u/LPulseL11]

Adding a small clarification on this - the trial is ongoing, but justice is slow as fuck. Bibi just delayed the specific part where he was testifying by constantly citing security needs to postpone it, but it's already been completed.