Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot said on Sunday that Israel urgently needs new leadership after he was formally tasked with forming a government. Eisenkot has secured recommendations from 67 of the 120 elected members of the parliament, compared with 46 for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Eisenkot, a former chief of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), has 28 days to form a government and secure the approval of the Knesset – Israel’s parliament. He may seek an additional 14-day extension from Herzog.
Risk descending to dark places
โIf we continue in the present situation, we risk descending to dark places, to a point of no return from which it will be very hard for us as a society and country to come back from….Therefore, there is great urgency for new leadership, leadership that you can look in the eyes and trust, whose concerns will always be Israelโs welfare and Israelโs security,โ he was quoted as saying in a report.ย
No clear majority
The October 27 elections, seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s leadership, produced no clear majority but divided the political landscape into two competing blocs, with the anti-Netanyahu alliance recommending Eisenkot.
Netanyahu’s bloc won 53 seats in the October 27 polls.ย The anti-Netanyahu bloc, also described as the ‘Change Bloc’, won 48 seats, with the remaining 19 going to Arab parties in a fractured mandate.
Netanyahu’s Likud emerged as the single largest party, but he failed to secure recommendations from all members of his bloc, with the United Torah Judaism party’s seven lawmakers choosing not to recommend any candidate.