Though his party and its electoral allies didn’t win the most parliamentary seats in Israel’s Oct. 27 general election, opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has been given the first chance to form a new government and thus emerge as prime minister. That was after Israeli president Isaac Herzog concluded the former military chief had the best shot at forming a ruling coalition that can survive a requisite vote of confidence in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

No party has ever won an outright majority in an Israeli election, so to become prime minister, a political leader must negotiate with other parties to assemble a sustainable governing coalition. In recent years, the divisions in Israeli politics have made that an especially difficult test. That’s evidenced by the uncertainty over whether Eisenkot will succeed. If he doesn’t, the incumbent prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu might get the second chance to form a government, and if both fail, a new election is in the cards.

Netanyahu’s Likud party, together with the right-wing and religious parties aligned with it, won 53 of 120 seats in the Knesset. Eisenkot’s center-right Yashar party and its allies took 48. The remaining 19 seats are controlled by two parties representing Israel’s Arab minority.

The process is laid out in one of Israel’s Basic Laws, which together form the closest thing the country has to a constitution.

Within seven days of the publication of election results, after consulting with parties represented in the Knesset, Israel’s president asks a member of the assembly to form a new government. Typically, the president, whose role is largely ceremonial, taps the leader of the largest Knesset faction. But that’s not required, and this year wasn’t the first time the custom wasn’t followed.

It’s generally understood that the president is meant to tap the party leader with the best prospect of forming a government that will survive an initial vote of confidence in the Knesset. Herzog gave Eisenkot the nod after he secured the endorsement of 67 members of the newly elected Knesset compared to 46 for Netanyahu.

A party leader has 28 days — which can be extended by another 14 days — to succeed in forming a durable government. If that leader fails, the president can assign the task to someone else, who has 28 days. In the event of another failure, a majority of Knesset members can ask the president to tap a third candidate, who gets 14 days to complete the job. If all efforts fail, a new election is held in three months.

While this process plays out, the incumbent prime minister — Netanyahu, in this case — continues to govern in a caretaker capacity.

Eisenkot, 66, is the son of poor Moroccan immigrants who grew up in the remote working-class port of Eilat. He rose through the ranks of the infantry to eventually become military chief, commanding Israel’s forces for four years through 2019.

Having entered the Knesset in late 2022, Eisenkot was a newcomer to politics when he was included in the war cabinet Netanyahu formed after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 precipitated a major conflagration. The ex-general resigned eight months later, saying Netanyahu’s decisions were being influenced by “political considerations.”Eisenkot lost a son, Gal, and two nephews in the war.

His party’s name means straightforward or honest in Hebrew. He has a plainspoken and somber style, in contrast to the articulate and telegenic Netanyahu. But his policies wouldn’t immediately take Israel in an entirely different direction, at least when it comes to its fraught relations with its neighbors.

Like Netanyahu, Eisenkot is hawkish on security issues. Notably, he was the architect of the Israeli military’s Dahiya doctrine, named for the Beirut neighborhood where the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah had its headquarters. It involves destroying civilian infrastructure and forcing local populations to leave so that Israel can better target its enemy. Israeli forces have been widely criticized by other governments and rights groups for applying the same strategy to Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians died in the recent war.

Like Netanyahu, Eisenkot opposes the formation of a Palestinian state. However, he rejects the Netanyahu government’s aggressive strategy of expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, part of the territory Palestinians wish to make part of a future, independent state. He has denounced settler violence and vowed to crack down on it. And he’s said he’d seek diplomatic solutions with Israel’s neighbors in exchange for troop withdrawals.

Eisenkot has supported the initial US-Israel assault on Iran, though he cautioned against renewing the fighting absent an Iranian attempt to rush toward building a nuclear weapon. He has rejected Netanyahu’s notion that military intervention can topple the regime in Iran and is more focused on eliminating the country’s nuclear program.

One path for Eisenkot would be to rely on the support of the Israeli Arab parties. In theory, they might join a ruling coalition. However, Eisenkot has suggested his conditions for partners include that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state and Hamas as a terrorist group, which the Arab parties have been reluctant to do.

With just the members of his bloc, Eisenkot could form a minority government that would rely on the Arab parties, sitting outside the coalition, to support it in an initial confidence vote and, presumably, any such vote in the future. That, however, could also prove difficult given the opposition to any such setup from Avigdor Liberman, leader of the seven-seat Israel Beytenu party, a member of Eisenkot’s own bloc.

Alternatively, Eisenkot could try to peel away enough members of Netanyahu’s electoral bloc to form a ruling coalition. The enticements to join a coalition can include offers of cabinet and other government positions as well as support for the particular causes of a party or a politician. Specifically, Eisenkot could try to bring in one or both of the parties representing Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews: Shas and United Torah Judaism. Those negotiations would be difficult given that they oppose mandatory military service for ultra-Orthodox men, a policy Eisenkot’s camp has vowed to enforce.

If he’s given the second chance to form a government, Netanyahu could try to pick off members of the parties in Eisenkot’s electoral bloc to get to a majority.

Such negotiations would likely prove difficult given that he’d need at least eight defectors and that antipathy toward the prime minister and some of his allies runs deep among members of the opposition. They criticize his government for failing to deliver the “total victory” Netanyahu has promised against Iran and its regional proxies, including Hamas; for weakening the judiciary; and for disregarding a Supreme Court ruling that the exemption of ultra-Orthodox men from the draft is inequitable.

The Israeli Arab parties have indicated they would not support a government led by Netanyahu, who claims the parties benefited from electoral foul play.

Herzog could encourage Eisenkot and Netanyahu to form a so-called government of national unity. Under the last such government in Israel, formed in mid-2020, Netanyahu was supposed to serve as prime minister for 18 months before handing the job to his partner, Benny Gantz of the Kahol Lavan party. But the government collapsed in December that year.