Israel's president handed Benjamin Netanyahu's rival the first shot at forming a government Saturday — and American taxpayers will bankroll whatever political reshuffle follows, as always.
While the U.S. press obsesses over Israeli coalition math, the question that matters back home is simpler: why are we sending billions to a foreign government that can't even form one?
President Isaac Herzog chose former military chief Gadi Eisenkot to try to build a coalition after deadlocked elections left neither side with a governing majority. Eisenkot's four-party bloc won just 48 seats in the 120-seat Knesset — 13 short of the 61 needed. Netanyahu's religious-nationalist coalition won 53. Neither side can govern alone.
Eisenkot secured the first shot because 67 lawmakers recommended him, according to Breitbart — but 19 of those came from Arab parties whose support he has said he will not accept. Netanyahu's Likud won 27 seats, the most of any single party, but his broader coalition fell short. The ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, holding 7 seats, declined to endorse either man.
Netanyahu warned that a government reliant on Arab parties would be a security disaster. "A government dependent on terror supporters will not fight terror," he said in a video statement. "With such a government, Israel simply will not survive." He called instead for a national unity government, arguing Israel's security challenges demanded broader cooperation.
Eisenkot, 66, a son of Moroccan immigrants who would be Israel's first Mizrahi prime minister, entered politics only in 2022. He served briefly in Netanyahu's wartime cabinet after the October 7 Hamas attack before returning to opposition, where he publicly rebuked Netanyahu over his management of the Gaza campaign. His public standing is tied to personal sacrifice: a son and two nephews were killed fighting in Gaza. "Now is the time to form a national emergency government," Eisenkot wrote on X. "I will do everything I can to ensure we are worthy."
He has 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension. His options — a minority government with Arab support on key votes, a coalition with ultra-Orthodox parties he has shunned, or a unity government with the man he swore he would never serve alongside — are all long shots. If he fails, someone else gets a try. If no one succeeds in roughly 100 days, Israelis go back to the polls. Again.
The New York Post framed Eisenkot's selection as an uphill battle given his weak seat count; Breitbart framed it as a significant setback for Netanyahu. Both miss the stakes for Americans. Whether it's Netanyahu or Eisenkot or a fifth election, the U.S. aid spigot stays open. No one in Washington is asking what Americans get in return — or why our own wide-open border gets less funding attention than Israel's political paralysis.
Eisenkot says "now is the time to form a national emergency government." In Washington, every foreign commitment is treated as an emergency. The ones at home never seem to qualify.
