Israeli party leaders will visit President Isaac Herzog’s residence this week to formally recommend their preferred candidate for prime minister after Tuesday’s inconclusive election. The meetings, which will be livestreamed from Wednesday, will include representatives of 11 parties spanning secular liberals, ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arab voters.
Herzog will then give the mandate to form a governing coalition to the candidate he considers most likely to succeed. Most party leaders are expected to support either Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the veteran right-wing leader, or Gadi Eisenkot, his main center-right rival.
Neither candidate secured a clear majority in the 120-seat Parliament. As a result, negotiations among parties and lawmakers could continue for weeks or months as politicians explore different routes to the 61 seats needed to govern.
Behind the scenes, parties are already bargaining for influence and assessing potential alliances. Nevo Cohen, a political strategist who managed Itamar Ben-Gvir’s 2022 election campaign, described the situation as “a game of chicken.”
Any coalition capable of reaching a parliamentary majority would likely require difficult compromises and could force politicians to abandon promises made during the campaign. Strategists are also evaluating how much room their parties have to maneuver before deciding how far they can go in negotiations, according to Lior Chorev, who worked on former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s campaign. Bennett’s party won 12 parliamentary seats in last week’s vote.
Sources: The New York Times World.