Here’s Who Is Meeting Israel’s President to Recommend a Prime Minister Israeli party leaders were holding discussions with President Isaac Herzog on Thursday about who should get the first chance to form a governing coalition.

President Isaac Herzog of Israel was meeting with leaders and officials from the country’s largest political parties on Thursday, to discuss which candidate they support to become prime minister to determine whom he should tap to try to form a governing coalition.

Israelis turned out to vote in record numbers in national elections last week, but no single party or coalition was a clear winner. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party secured the most seats, but his right-wing alliance fell short of an outright majority of 61 seats in Parliament, securing 53 seats. The Jewish opposition bloc, led by Gadi Eisenkot of the center-right Yashar party, picked up 48 seats, and Arab-led parties, which could back the opposition, secured a record 19 seats.

The president has a mostly symbolic role in Israel, except after elections, when he must select a candidate to try to form a government and become prime minister. The discussions between Mr. Herzog and the parties began on Wednesday.

Mr. Eisenkot is expected to have the most support, with at least one of the Arab-led parties telling Mr. Herzog that it backed him. But Mr. Eisenkot will have to unify the opposition and overcome resistance among his own would-be allies to forming a government with the backing of Arab lawmakers.

The president has until Nov. 11 to name the first person who can form a coalition and who will then have up to six weeks to establish a government.

Here are the parties whose representative Mr. Herzog has met; how many seats they won in the Parliament, or Knesset; and where they stand ideologically. This will be updated as more parties meet with the president on Thursday.

Raam Eight seats Raam, or the United Arab List, led by Mansour Abbas, is an Islamist party with a pragmatic approach to Israeli politics. This year, it ran a centrist Jewish politician in the second spot on its candidate list, Yoav Segalovitz, a career police commander and a former deputy minister. In 2021, Mr. Abbas made history when he made Raam the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition.

Raam officials told Mr. Herzog on Thursday that the party backed Mr. Eisenkot. But it was far from clear whether Mr. Abbas met Mr. Eisenkot’s conditions for joining his coalition, which include calling Hamas a terrorist group. Mr. Abbas has condemned the Palestinian armed group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, the deadliest day in the country’s history. But he has hesitated to call Hamas terrorists.

Mr. Herzog and his aides pressed Mr. Abbas on the question, who repeated his support for President Trump’s plan to disarm Hamas and condemned militant attacks. But Mr. Abbas suggested he would not adopt the terrorist label, in part to preserve his own influence “on the other side.”

“Arab citizens are the bridge. Don’t destroy that bridge,” Mr. Abbas said. “Don’t make us out to be either supporters of terrorism or traitors.”Democrats Led by Yair Golan, a former major general, the center-left Democrats were formed in 2024 from the remnants of the once dominant Labor party and the more left-wing Meretz party. The party favors a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Israel as a liberal, secular Jewish state, and is part of the opposition bloc supporting Mr. Eisenkot. Mr. Golan urged Mr. Eisenkot to form an alliance with the Arab-led parties after the elections and has since met with representatives of some of those parties to discuss how their factions can work together.

Naama Lazimi, a member of Parliament for the Democrats, told Mr. Herzog that the party recommended Mr. Eisenkot should form a government and accused Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition of undermining the election results. Ms. Lazimi vowed her party would “do whatever is needed, with all our power, to replace this government and the man leading it.”

Otzma Yehudit Seven seats Otzma Yehudit, meaning Jewish Power, is a far-right party led by Itamar Ben-Gvir, an anti-Arab ultranationalist who supports permanent Israeli rule over the West Bank and Gaza. Once considered fringe even among right-wing politicians, Mr. Ben-Gvir served as national security minister in Mr. Netanyahu’s government and he backed the prime minister to lead a new government.

Mr. Herzog praised some of Mr. Ben-Gvir’s harsh policies in Israeli prisons, saying that their “time had come.”But he criticized his party for joining Mr. Netanyahu’s attempts to assert that the election had been stolen by the Arab parties.

United Torah Judaism U.T.J.’s politics center on protecting the strictly religious way of life of ultra-Orthodox Jews, or haredi. The party has long been allied with Mr. Netanyahu, whose governments have supported U.T.J.’s voters with subsidies. But the party declined to nominate anyone, including Mr. Netanyahu, to form a government this time around. Haredi leaders want to protect a longstanding exemption for ultra-Orthodox religious students from Israeli military service, after Israel’s Supreme Court ordered them to be conscripted. In their view, Mr. Netanyahu has failed to deliver.

OTHER parties The Israeli president met on Wednesday with representatives from several smaller parties. These included the far-right Religious Zionism alliance, which secured six seats and is part of Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc; the right-wing secular Yisrael Beiteinu party, which picked up seven seats and is part of the opposition bloc; and the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which won six seats and is part of Mr. Netanyahu’s bloc.

On Wednesday, Mr. Netanyahu secured 12 recommendations and Mr. Eisenkot got seven — but the balance was expected to shift after Thursday’s meetings.

Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering news around the world. She is based in New York.

Aaron Boxerman is a Times reporter covering Israel and Gaza. He is based in Jerusalem.