Israel's President Herzog to Name Candidate to Form Government on Sunday, With Eisenkot Ahead

Israel's President Isaac Herzog has said he will name a candidate to form the country's next government by Sunday, after a majority of lawmakers backed opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Herzog made the announcement on Thursday after holding marathon talks with parties elected to the 120-seat parliament, known as the Knesset, according to the material.

Some 67 lawmakers endorsed Eisenkot, a former military chief, while 46 backed Netanyahu.

In televised remarks at the end of the talks, Herzog said that although the results of the consultations may appear clear, mutual vetoes between the blocs and within the blocs themselves make it difficult to say who has the best chance of assembling a governing coalition.

He said he would hold personal talks with some of the party leaders over the Israeli weekend, which runs Friday-Saturday, and make a pick on Sunday.

Israel's October 27 election left neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot with a clear path to a parliamentary majority, handing Herzog the task of choosing a candidate in a deeply divided country.

Netanyahu's Likud won the most seats of any single party with 27 in the 120-seat Knesset, but his wider religious-nationalist coalition garnered only 53 in total.

Eisenkot's alliance of four Jewish-led parties won 48 seats. Two parties representing Israel's Palestinian minority won an unprecedented 19 seats.

Eisenkot, like Netanyahu, has ruled out forming a government with the Arab-led parties. Both of those parties nonetheless recommended him, giving him the support of a comfortable majority of lawmakers.

Ahmad Tibi, a senior member of the Joint List, which represents an alliance of Arab parties, told The Associated Press that they want to do things they did not do in the past in order to remove this government.

Eisenkot's party, Yashar, said his 67 recommendations were the most any candidate had received since 2015, and urged Herzog to give him the mandate as soon as possible so he could form a national emergency government.

Netanyahu suffered a further setback on Thursday when United Torah Judaism, one of the two main ultra-Orthodox parties and a longtime ally, declined to recommend any candidate. The party broke with Netanyahu over his coalition's failure to pass legislation exempting ultra-Orthodox men from military service, The Times of Israel reported.

Yariv Oppenheimer, a member of the Democrats, a party in Eisenkot's alliance, told Al Jazeera that he saw no reason Herzog would not choose Eisenkot on Sunday, adding that it was very clear Netanyahu did not have a chance to establish a government.

Once nominated by Herzog, the candidate will have 28 days to try to forge a government, with a possible 14-day extension. Netanyahu will remain prime minister in a caretaker government until a new coalition is formed, or through another election that must be held if no candidate succeeds.