Sarah

Eisenkot has the first mandate and will get the chance to form a government first, but the numbers behind his 67 show why he got it and why it will be hard to turn into a government. 1) The 67 splits into 48 from Zionist parties and 19 from Ra'am and the Joint List. Netanyahu has 46, or 53 with UTJ. Neither side has a Zionist-only majority, and Eisenkot is further from one. 2) Even with UTJ, Eisenkot's Zionist parties reach only 55. He can't get to 61 without the Arab lists unless Shas moves too. That explains why his camp talks about the Haredi parties, plural. 3) His four conditions keep Ra'am and the Joint List out of the coalition but leave room for their outside support. It is the 2021 Bennett-Lapid model, with the Arab parties outside the cabinet instead of inside it. 4) The universal service condition blocks the Haredi path. If he softens it, Likud says he dropped a condition. If he keeps it, UTJ stays out. Regev is already making that charge. 5) Taking the Knesset first is his strongest move. The Speaker controls the agenda, the votes and the committees, so Netanyahu gains less by running out the clock. 6) The Speaker vote needs 61, and he has 48 without the Arab lists. That first vote will show publicly who his majority depends on. The bloc still hasn't agreed on a candidate. 7) Netanyahu stays prime minister through every failed round. Likud's goal is to split the 48 by appealing to Bennett and Liberman, not to win Arab votes. 8) Eisenkot's pledge to back military action only against "direct and immediate threats" raises the cost of Netanyahu opening a new front during the caretaker period. 9) Yashar! is using the US aid cutoff to argue that repairing ties with Washington requires a new government. That also justifies the "emergency" label. Herzog controls the timing and the extension, and he is still pressing for power-sharing. If he leans toward a rotation, a narrow Eisenkot government becomes one option rather than the expected outcome. Eisenkot is running two strategies at once. Taking the Knesset needs Arab votes in the open. Courting the Haredim needs him to say he doesn't rely on them. Both can work for a few weeks, but not past the first vote that requires 61. It looks like the best he can hope for is to block Netanyahu from forming a government and impose another election.