Israel’s opposition said Friday it was making progress in its bid to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as one of its leaders lifted a veto over demands that ultra-Orthodox Jews serve in the military, opening the door to a once-unlikely alliance with the community.
Neither Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, nor opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot reached a majority in the Oct. 27 election, with Israeli society highly polarized on Netanyahu and exhausted by three years of war.
Eisenkot said he expected President Isaac Herzog, who met with party leaders this week, to present him with a mandate to form a government when he makes his announcement on Sunday.
“We have made significant progress and achieved breakthroughs, quietly and modestly, but a lot is still happening behind the scenes,” Eisenkot wrote in an X post moments before much of Israel closed its doors for the weekly Sabbath.
Yair Golan, Israel’s leading left-wing leader and member of the opposition bloc, also highlighted the progress, saying: “I am more optimistic than I was on Wednesday morning after the election results.”
Eisenkot, a former military commander whose campaign aimed to attract secular and liberal Israelis, could form a government with Israeli Arabs, whose seat count has soared because of anger at Netanyahu’s far-right government.
But an alliance with the Israeli Arabs faces strong disagreement from his opposition partner Avigdor Liberman, a former collaborator of Netanyahu, who now strongly criticizes the Prime Minister but shares his hawkish views on the Palestinians.
Liberman said Friday he would not back down from his refusal to work with Israeli Arabs, but called for negotiations with ultra-Orthodox Jews, even as he ran on a promise to end their exemption from mandatory military service in Israel.
Liberman said it was time to “understand that trying to have everything risks getting nothing.”
“It hurts me, and I know it hurts many others as well. But given all of the challenges we face today, the national interest of the State of Israel and the Jewish people must take precedence over all other considerations,” Liberman said.
– The ultra-Orthodox exercise power again –
The exemption from military service of ultra-Orthodox Jews has fueled widespread resentment among other Israelis, with reservists serving multiple missions in the wars Israel has been waging since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
Netanyahu, while personally secular, has long relied on the ultra-Orthodox, accepting that this community – which makes up about 14% of the population and has a birth rate much higher than the Israeli average – can send its children to religious schools rather than the army.
But he did not go so far as to write the military exemption into law, angering the two main ultra-Orthodox parties who left his government, although they did not seek to impeach him.
One of the parties, United Torah Judaism, refused on Thursday to recommend Netanyahu form the next government during consultations with Herzog, but without supporting Eisenkot.
Yaakov Asher, a party lawmaker, welcomed Liberman’s change of heart and said his rabbis would evaluate any formal alliance proposals.
“It is encouraging to see the flexibility of all political actors when it comes to conscription,” Asher said.
“It is painful to think how much incitement and brotherly hatred could have been avoided if the same flexibility had been demonstrated in recent years.”
His party and the other ultra-Orthodox group, Shas, together have 13 seats, enough to bring Eisenkot to power.
Liberman put up posters during the campaign promising to crack down on “drug rebels.” During an appearance earlier this year, he called ultra-Orthodox Jews “anti-Jewish” because of their demands.
His Yisrael Beiteinu party won seven seats, the fewest among the five main opposition parties. Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, also campaigned on a promise to end the military exemption and has not commented on Liberman’s about-face.
– War Clouds –
Eisenkot, in his statement before the Sabbath, said he remained committed to “compulsory service for all” but that it could be civilian work, providing a path to integrate the ultra-Orthodox.
He called on parties to join him “now or at a later stage”, hinting that he could first form a minority government supported by lawmakers who would not initially join him.
Eisenkot said change was urgent, alluding to speculation that Netanyahu could soon resume the war against Iran alongside U.S. President Donald Trump, despite both leaders’ electoral defeats.
“The current government poses a fundamental threat to the very existence of Israeli democracy. This is not an exaggeration. All of this is happening while the war fronts remain open and subject to political and personal whims,” he said.
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