Netanyahu rival Eisenkot secures broad backing in bid to form government

After holding consultations with party leaders, Israel's president has pledged to nominate a candidate by Sunday to try and form a government. Earlier this week, Isaac Herzog accepted the certified results of last week's parliamentary election. That in itself was a blow to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's longest serving prime minister. Netanyahu has tried to discredit the vote in which he and his allies lost their majority in the 120 member parliament, while Arab-led parties made historic gains. Now, opposition contender Gadi Eisenkot is trying to cobble together a A coalition to oust Netanyahu. For more, we can bring in our international affairs commentator, Douglas Herbert. Hello to you, Doug. How are you, Will? Good, thank you, Doug. Now, even if Eisenkot is named to try and form a government, he probably won't be able to do this without the help of Arab-led parties. Why is this such a difficult task in Israel? Because so far he is unwilling to allow Arab parties to join any coalition. And that's partly because some of the factions within his opposition bloc are, Well, one particular faction is vehemently opposed to Anything that involves bringing Arab-led parties into a potential ruling governing coalition. Look, consultations are over, right? Eisenkot has emerged with a lot, a good sizable share of endorsements. That is parties saying, telling the president of Israel, we would back this particular leader as opposed to this. And Eisenkot got 67 votes in that, of those endorsements. But endorsements do not a coalition make. And while the number 67 seems to be pretty comfortable margin above the 61 seats needed to have the majority in the Knesset, now begins the hard work, which could take weeks or months, of actually trying to cobble it together. This is a very... difficult needle to thread, in the sense that there are two major sort of lists among the Arab-led parties. One of them, called Ram, which has fewer seats. Together, they have 19 seats they bring, which is the largest in their history. One of them is smaller, and it has, on a rare occasion, once in the past, cooperated and joined. A Jewish-led coalition, and that was in 2021. It didn't last too long. It broke down in disarray. But the other Arab-led list here, which is called the Joint List, they've never, ever joined any bloc led by Jewish-led Zionist-slash-Zionist parties. And what's different here, and here's where there might be an opening for Gadi Eisenkot, if he's willing to take the opportunity. It said one of the lawmakers is a member of this joint list has said that they are willing to break with precedent that is historical precedent and actually join this Jewish led block that is work with them in a minority role. That is, they wouldn't formally join. Right. They wouldn't be a full fledged member, but they would sit there on the side, support the block and on a vote by vote by vote basis would support the block in critical votes, which would essentially give it a viable. Thank you very much. Yeah, and a lot of uncertainty about Israel's relationship with the U.S. after the recent midterm elections we saw there as well. Yeah. All bets are sort of off right now on the U.S.-Israeli relationship, what it's going to look like going ahead, because the Democratic sweep in Congress is going to have. Potentially big implications for the bilateral relationship. Well, first of all, you had Trump himself, as the voting was underway on Election Day, saying that the U.S. was going to end its $3.8 billion in annual military aid to Israel. And he said that was with Netanyahu's agreement. We haven't really heard much from Netanyahu on that yet. But that was already, that would signal a major shift. And Trump was obviously bowing to the political winds and perhaps trying to gain last-minute votes. But the fact of the matter is... You have now especially a lot of progressive wing of the Democratic Party who are very much advocates for a tougher approach to Israel, not giving Israel a blank check anymore and making a lot of the support from the world's most powerful country for its traditionally closest ally contingent on certain things, upholding human rights. Ending the settler violence that has been documented by human rights groups against Palestinians in the West Bank, and also ending the forever wars, whether it's in Gaza, whether it's against Iran, whether it's in Syria, whether it's in Jordan, Lebanon. All of these wars together are going to now be sort of put on the cutting block, and that could really upend the relationship. Eisenkot, if he were to eventually form a government, says he wants to ensure a good, close and constructive working relationship with Donald Trump. But let's remember, Donald Trump is now a very lame, lame duck president, and he's not going to be the final word in the way that relationship might work, even if he still has a big hand over foreign policy. It's going to be very different going ahead. Netanyahu's approach to foreign relations is about to really change, perhaps radically, regardless of who the next prime minister is. All right, Doug, thank you very much. Douglas Hubbard, our international affairs commentator.