What Is the Knesset? How Israel’s Prime Minister Is Chosen

The Knesset writes Israel’s laws, oversees the government and has the power to make and unmake it. Israel has no single written constitution. Instead, the Knesset has passed a series of Basic Laws, among them Basic Law: The Knesset and Basic Law: The Government, that set out how the state’s institutions work.

It also approves the state budget and elects the president, who serves one seven-year term. Much of the detailed work happens in standing committees, such as Finance and Foreign Affairs and Defense, which review bills and question ministers and officials. The Knesset can end its own term early by passing a dissolution law with at least 61 votes, and it is dissolved automatically if it fails to pass a budget by the legal deadline, normally March 31 of the budget year.

The Knesset has 120 seats, filled by nationwide proportional representation. The whole country is one constituency. Voters choose a party list rather than a local candidate, and seats are divided in proportion to each list’s share of the vote. A list needs at least 3.25 percent of valid votes, about four seats, to get in; the threshold was raised to that level in 2014.

The name and the number both come from the Knesset Hagedolah, or Great Assembly, the council of Jewish sages that met in Jerusalem in the fifth century BC. Knesset means assembly in Hebrew. Israel’s first Knesset met in Jerusalem on February 14, 1949, and the chamber has sat in its building at Givat Ram in Jerusalem since 1966. In the October 2026 election, turnout was 77.9 percent and 11 lists won seats, led by Likud with 27 and Eisenkot’s Yashar with 21, as our count of who won Israel’s election showed.

The president picks a Knesset member to try to form a government, and that member becomes prime minister only when the Knesset votes confidence in the new cabinet. Under Basic Law: The Government, the president first consults every party elected to the Knesset, normally within seven days of the official results, and asks whom each recommends. The president then gives the task to the member judged most likely to succeed, usually the one with the most recommendations.

That candidate has 28 days to build a coalition, and the president can add up to 14 more. If the attempt fails, the president can give a second member 28 days, with no extension, or hand the choice to the Knesset itself. In the last stage, 61 lawmakers have 21 days to ask the president in writing to give the task to a named member, who then has 14 days. If none of these steps produces a government, the Knesset is dissolved and Israel votes again.

The prime minister must be a member of the Knesset. Other ministers need not be. Until a new government is sworn in, the outgoing prime minister stays in office, which is why Netanyahu still leads the government today.

A new government needs the confidence of a majority of the members who vote, not a fixed 61. On June 13, 2021, Naftali Bennett’s government was approved by 60 votes to 59, with one abstention. In practice a prime minister wants 61 seats behind the coalition, because a government with fewer cannot be sure of passing laws or a budget.

Removing a government is much harder. Since 2014, a no-confidence motion succeeds only if 61 members vote for it and back a named replacement government in the same vote, a design called constructive no-confidence. A no-confidence vote has toppled an Israeli government only once: on March 15, 1990, Yitzhak Shamir’s government lost by 60 votes to 55, at a time when a simple majority was enough.

Yes, for about five years. A 1992 change to Basic Law: The Government created a separate ballot for prime minister. It was used alongside the Knesset elections of 1996 and 1999 and in a stand-alone vote in February 2001. Netanyahu won the first direct election in 1996, Ehud Barak the second in 1999 and Ariel Sharon the third in 2001.

In March 2001, weeks after Sharon’s win, the Knesset repealed direct election by 72 votes to 37 and restored the parliamentary system used today.

Yes. Arab citizens, about a fifth of Israel’s population, vote in Knesset elections and sit in the chamber. In October 2026 the two Arab-led parties, the Joint List with 11 seats and Ra’am with 8, won 19 seats between them, the most they have taken in a single election. Ra’am joined Bennett’s coalition in 2021, the first independent Arab party to sit in an Israeli government.

Both parties recommended Eisenkot to the president this month. A recommendation does not commit either to join a government, and the arithmetic explains the stakes: the anti-Netanyahu parties have 48 seats, 13 short of 61, as our profile of Gadi Eisenkot explains.

The speaker, elected by the members, chairs the plenum, sets the agenda and represents the Knesset. Amir Ohana of Likud has held the post since December 2022. Parties in the anti-Netanyahu camp have asked for a vote on a new speaker at the first sitting of the 26th Knesset, while United Torah Judaism has said it will not back replacing Ohana before a new government is formed.