Israel’s president has tapped a lawmaker to try to form a new government. He has about six weeks to build a coalition.

Transcript

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Israel has taken a big step toward ousting its longest serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Today, his main rival, Gadi Eisenkot, begins trying to form the next Israeli government. Neither man’s party won a majority in last month’s elections, so Eisenkot will have to build a coalition, which could be tricky. To explain why, NPR’s Lauren Frayer joins us from Tel Aviv. Welcome.

LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: Thanks for having me.

RASCOE: Who is Gadi Eisenkot, and what lies ahead for him?

FRAYER: So he’s a former Israeli military chief. His son was a reservist who was killed in combat in Gaza. He’s center-right, as opposed to Netanyahu on the far right. Eisenkot briefly served in Netanyahu’s cabinet after the October 7 Hamas attacks. But the two had a falling out. Eisenkot founded a new party, ran against Netanyahu and now wants to replace him. Now, Netanyahu wants to prevent that, and he is still the caretaker prime minister.

RASCOE: What could Netanyahu do?

FRAYER: He could try to delay the seating of the new parliament, which is due to happen Tuesday. He could also perhaps try to stop the election of a new speaker of parliament.

I spoke with Mairav Zonszein. She is an Israeli American analyst at the International Crisis Group here in Tel Aviv. And she says Netanyahu is taking a page from the playbook of his friend, Donald Trump.

MAIRAV ZONSZEIN: Netanyahu meanwhile is kind of having this January 6 moment trying to undermine the elections. There’s been all kinds of stories that he’s been pushing about fraud, which there’s no real basis for. And even people who he himself has appointed in various jobs in Israel, whether judges or security service types, have pushed back on this idea that the election was somehow fraudulent or stolen.

FRAYER: Now, the exception to that is the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli equivalent of the FBI, who has been trying to advance investigations into Arab lawmakers.

RASCOE: So is that who he’s accusing of fraud, Arab lawmakers?

FRAYER: Arab-led parties, yeah. He also accuses them of disloyalty to the Jewish state and of endangering Israel amid threats from Iran, even though, as you know, Iran is not an Arab country. It’s Persian and has actually attacked Arab countries.

Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about 20% of the population here, and they voted in this election in record numbers and could be the kingmakers.

RASCOE: That’s interesting. We could see Arab parties in Israel’s government?

FRAYER: We could, and it’s only happened once, actually, in Israel’s history. But Eisenkot initially said he would not partner with Arab-led parties, and he’s facing pressure now to go back on that, to work with lawmakers like Iman Khatib-Yassin, whom I interviewed. She’s been in parliament here for six years, actually the first Hijab-wearer elected to Israel’s parliament.

IMAN KHATIB-YASSIN: We are Israeli citizens. We are born here, so it will be more good for all of us if all of us can be together.

FRAYER: Eisenkot has issued conditions. He wants Arab parties to denounce Hamas. Now, all of them have denounced Hamas’ actions but stopped short of labeling it as a terrorist group. And that could be a deal-breaker for some of Eisenkot’s other partners, you know, Jewish Zionist parties. So one thing we could see happen is that Arab parties agree to support Eisenkot without formally joining his coalition government.

RASCOE: This is also a critical time in Israeli politics because of the wars in Iran and Gaza. Those were big issues for U.S. voters, too, in last week’s midterm elections. How did those results go down over there?

FRAYER: Not so well. I mean, think about this. In just a 24-hour period, President Trump said he’s cutting aid to Israel. Then staunch critics of Israel – people like the Democrat from Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed – won their races to Congress. Then Vice President Vance comes out and says Israel was one of the reasons Republicans lost. So none of that looks good for Israel.

I went up to an Israeli man on the street in Jerusalem, 36-year-old Svee Stern (ph). He works for an NGO, and I asked him how he’s feeling about all this.

SVEE STERN: Wow. We have a lot of challenge in Israel, and I think one of the biggest and most important is our reputation. We have to work really hard to start to work with the Democrats in the U.S.

FRAYER: He said, you know, Netanyahu bet on the Republicans. Now, whoever the next prime minister is – Eisenkot gets his first shot at trying for that job – will have to make inroads with the incoming Democrats in Congress and try to rebuild Israel’s reputation.

RASCOE: And what’s the timeline for Eisenkot and this transition of power?

FRAYER: So Eisenkot, starting today, gets 28 days to form a governing coalition with an optional 14-day extension – so roughly six weeks. If he fails, the Israeli president could ask somebody else, possibly Netanyahu. That person would get another 28 days to try, and if they fail, Israel could be looking at repeat elections in the coming months and a lot more uncertainty here.

RASCOE: That’s NPR’s Lauren Frayer in Tel Aviv. Thank you so much.

FRAYER: You’re welcome.

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