Eisenkot’s Real Arithmetic And Unreal Politics
A minority government under Gadi Eisenkot is possible on paper and improbable in practice, because the distance between the two is occupied by one man, Avigdor Liberman.
President Isaac Herzog formally gave Eisenkot the first chance to form the next government on Sunday evening, after consultations showed a majority of the Knesset supporting the choice. Eisenkot has 28 days, extendable by a further 14, and if he fails the mandate can pass to Netanyahu. The dates are 6 December and 20 December. Sixty-seven lawmakers endorsed him over Netanyahu. That number is less useful than it looks. The 67 divide into 48 seats held by Jewish-led parties and 19 held by Arab-led parties, against 53 for the outgoing coalition.
An Israeli government does not need 61 votes at investiture. It needs more votes for than against; the Bennett–Lapid government passed 60 to 59 in June 2021. The 48 therefore do not need to find 13 more seats. They need to outvote 53. Abstention by the Arab parties does not accomplish that, since 48 against 53 loses. If the Joint List abstains, however, Ra’am’s eight seats voting in favour would carry an Eisenkot-led government. The phrase “outside support” has been used loosely in recent days, and the arithmetic does not allow it to remain loose. At least one Arab party must vote yes, unless some of the Haredi seats stay out of the chamber or abstain. Israeli media reported that Eisenkot’s initial plan was a four-party minority government with outside backing from Ra’am and possibly United Torah Judaism, which holds seven seats and recommended no candidate.
Liberman removes the first step of that plan. His party holds seven of the bloc’s 48 seats. Without them the minority government has 41, and only the full weight of both Arab parties voting in favour carries it. That is the most exposed form of the arrangement, and he has ruled it out in language that leaves little room. He told journalists that such a government would last under a year and return Netanyahu with 70 seats. He also blamed Eisenkot’s campaign for losing the bloc eight to ten seats in its final ten days, arguing that minority-government talk drove right-wing voters back to Netanyahu. That is a claim from an interested party, and the post-election data do not settle it. His alternative is specific. He wants a 61-seat government with the Haredi parties, or another election.
The arithmetic of that alternative is clean. Shas and United Torah Judaism together hold 13 seats, which would take Eisenkot’s bloc to exactly 61. The price is political. The Haredi parties demand continued conscription exemptions, so any partnership would break an explicit campaign promise. United Torah Judaism has refused to endorse Netanyahu, while Shas backed him. Netanyahu has noticed. Faced with the possibility of a Haredi–Eisenkot coalition, he is reconsidering the unity government he previously rejected. His version requires all of his previous allies to come along. Yashar has answered that Likud and its friends could join an Eisenkot-led coalition, though it did not extend the offer to Netanyahu.
An historical analogy to use here is that Yitzhak Rabin after 1993. Shas left his government that year, and Rabin governed with 56 seats, kept in office by the five Arab MKs of Hadash and the Arab Democratic Party. Oslo II passed 61 to 59 in October 1995. Rabin’s minority was durable, and the right’s answer was delegitimisation: a government dependent on Arab votes was described as a government without a mandate. Netanyahu is using the same instrument now. He has said that Israel would not survive a coalition reliant on Arab parties.
The analogy deserves examination, because it cuts both ways. Rabin depended on five seats; Eisenkot would depend on nineteen, from a record Arab turnout, and from parties that are far less willing to remain silent about Gaza than Hadash was about Oslo. Rabin also faced a different opposition. What made his minority survivable is a feature of Israeli law that Liberman discounts: a government can be removed only by a constructive vote of no confidence, which requires 61 votes for an alternative prime minister. Netanyahu’s 53 cannot topple a minority government alone. Liberman’s own precedent points the same way. The Bennett–Lapid government, which had Ra’am inside the coalition, fell after a little more than a year because members of its own majority defected, not because Netanyahu found the votes. A four-party minority of 48 has even less margin for a single defection, and its first budget would be a second investiture vote under worse conditions
Neoclassical realism asks how external pressure is converted into policy through domestic filters, and Herzog supplied the external variable himself. He and Eisenkot both referred to the new political situation in the United States, where the midterm elections suggested weakening support for Israel on both sides of the aisle. A government facing that pressure needs room to take decisions on Gaza, on Iran and on the Washington relationship. The filter is the coalition table, and at that table Eisenkot is being asked to break one of three promises. The three are partnering with Arab parties, drafting Haredi men, and entering a unity government with Netanyahu. The unity route, a 67-seat government with Likud, would abandon his central pledge to remove Netanyahu. The minority route breaks the weakest of the three, since outside support is not cabinet membership, and it is the one the most reliable partner has refused.
My assessment is that the minority government is unreal in the form first floated and real only as a fallback. It becomes available if Liberman, after 6 December, must choose between tolerating it and sending the country back to the polls, and he has so far declined to say which he prefers.