Netanyahu Unity Government: Why Did Eisenkot Say No?

Benjamin Netanyahu asked his rival on Saturday 14 November to join him in a national unity government, and the rival said no the same evening. “Let us go into the room, without preconditions,” Israel’s caretaker prime minister said in a Hebrew video statement released by his Likud party. Gadi Eisenkot, the former army chief who holds the mandate to form a government, called the appeal “another spin.”

“Nice try, but these tricks don’t work on me,” Eisenkot said in a written reply. “And they don’t work on the citizens of Israel either.” He said negotiators from Likud and his Yashar party were already due to meet on Sunday 15 November, and that Netanyahu knew it.

Netanyahu said Iran “will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against us” and that a narrow government could not meet the threat. His first unity appeal, at the swearing-in of the Knesset on 10 November, ended with Eisenkot calling him “unfit to remain in office.”

• Netanyahu said a security briefing he gave Eisenkot on Thursday 12 November “only strengthened my understanding of how essential it is at this time to form a national unity government.”
• Eisenkot said Likud could join only a government he leads, with “recognition of the principles I have laid out and a break with the extremists.”
• Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich backed Netanyahu on X and wrote: “Gadi, the time has come.”
• Eisenkot said the Knesset speaker vote on Tuesday 17 November is Likud’s chance “to show how serious they are.”

The statement opened with the Thursday briefing. “Gadi and I have known each other for many years, since his time as IDF chief of staff and even before that,” Netanyahu said.

“The Iranian regime, which seeks Israel’s destruction, is once again working to revive its nuclear program,” he went on. “We must remove this existential threat from us once and for all.”

He said who could not do that: “a narrow government, or a government that relies on supporters of terrorism.” On 10 November his X account had posted seven times that it is forbidden to form “a dangerous government with terror supporters from Ra’am and the Joint List,” the two Arab-led parties that hold 19 of the Knesset’s 120 seats.

“Put aside all disputes and all boycotts, and reach agreements for Israel’s security and future,” he told Eisenkot. He named a single subject for compromise, saying conscription “can be solved together with representatives of the Haredi public,” the ultra-Orthodox community whose young men are largely exempt from the draft. The statement did not say who would be prime minister.

“The outgoing prime minister’s statement to the media tonight, calling for negotiations, is another spin,” Eisenkot said about an hour later. “Netanyahu knows that such a meeting has already been scheduled.”

He said Netanyahu “knows he lost the election” and accused him of disgracing a state ceremony in the Knesset, a reference to the 10 November speech.

Eisenkot then turned to Tuesday, when lawmakers are due to vote on replacing the Knesset speaker, Likud’s Amir Ohana, with Matan Kahana, a former army colonel from Eisenkot’s list. He said Likud and Smotrich’s Religious Zionism should let the vote go ahead on schedule and back Kahana. “This is their opportunity to show how serious they are,” he said. “Otherwise, once again, it is nothing more than an empty political trick.”

“I hope that the prime minister’s outstretched hand will be met by a brotherly hand,” wrote Smotrich, who leads a far-right party in Netanyahu’s outgoing coalition.

In a post on X on Friday 13 November, Eisenkot had told any would-be partner to accept four principles: Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, the Declaration of Independence, military or national service for all, and recognition of Hamas as a terrorist organisation that must be dismantled. “This is not an empty statement. I mean it,” he wrote. “I intend to leave no stone unturned.”

The Likud and Yashar negotiating teams are due to meet on Sunday 15 November, a meeting Eisenkot said was fixed before Netanyahu spoke.

Ohana said he scheduled the speaker vote for Tuesday 17 November at 4 p.m. after 67 lawmakers signed a request to replace him. United Torah Judaism has said it will not vote to remove him before a government exists. The tally will show whether 61 votes can be found without the ultra-Orthodox parties, and whether any lawmaker from Likud or Religious Zionism takes up Eisenkot’s challenge.

Herzog’s office said Eisenkot has 28 days from 8 November, which runs to about 6 December, with a possible 14-day extension. Netanyahu stays in office until the Knesset approves a successor. He has made two unity appeals in five days and Eisenkot has refused both, so Tuesday’s vote is the first count that will test either man’s claim.