Israel’s acting prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Gadi Eisenkot, responsible for trying to shape the next Executive, have agreed this Thursday to coordinate and exchange information about the country’s “security situation” during a meeting held amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, after the opposition had urged authorities to avoid “dangerous maneuvers.”
“The parties must keep each other informed about the situation when necessary,” Netanyahu and Eisenkot said in a brief joint statement released after the meeting.
The meeting was held in the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, where the leader of the Yashar party was “informed” about “the diplomatic and security challenges currently facing the State of Israel.”
These were the only public comments by both leaders about the meeting, which also included Netanyahu’s military secretary, Guy Markizeno.
Hours earlier, Eisenkot had sent a letter to Netanyahu in which he demanded the utmost “caution and responsibility” and warned him against adopting security-related decisions or deploying the Armed Forces motivated by “outside interests” or politics, during the transition period following the latest elections, in which the bloc led by Likud lost its majority in the Knesset.
That same Thursday, the former Israeli prime minister Yair Lapid said that “a government will be formed.” “It may take some time and we will all go through an emotional rollercoaster of anxiety and fear before that happens, but a good government will be formed—one with principles, worthy of the people of Israel.”
The “number two” of the B’Yachad coalition (Together), which backs Eisenkot’s bloc, expressed himself this way in a video collected by the newspaper “Times of Israel,” in which he argues that giving up that future Executive would be an “unforgivable act of national irresponsibility.”
For this reason, he has stressed that “there are no perfect coalition agreements.” “So yes, we will make concessions. It is impossible to form a government without painful concessions. We probably won’t be able to achieve all of our goals or keep each and every one of the promises in the next six months, but a government will be formed,” Lapid reiterated.
The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, has charged Eisenkot with the mission of assembling a parliamentary majority following the elections held on October 27. Despite this presidential mandate, Netanyahu continues to defend the creation of a "unity government" headed by his party, Likud, and backed by the ultra-Orthodox and far-right formations.