Eisenkot takes control of Knesset, but speaker pick may complicate government formation - analysis

At Yashar’s faction meeting in the Knesset before Tuesday’s swearing-in ceremony, Gadi Eisenkot reiterated that his coalition would be open to anyone who accepts his four principles. Israel must be a Jewish and democratic state, the government must uphold the values of the Declaration of Independence, everyone must serve, and Hamas’s governing and military capabilities must be destroyed.

Two weeks after the election, it is still unclear how he plans to put together a government on those terms. The haredi parties are unlikely to agree to universal service, and many of the 19 Arab MKs are unlikely to sign on to the first and fourth principles.

But he is not standing still, and Eisenkot is already putting the anti-Netanyahu majority to work in the Knesset.

The 48 MKs in the change bloc and the 19 in the Arab parties gave him the votes on Wednesday to elect Yashar’s Roy Folkman as chairman of the powerful Arrangements Committee and are expected to give him the votes to replace Likud’s Amir Ohana as Knesset speaker next Tuesday.

The arithmetic that helped Eisenkot secure the presidential mandate is already changing who runs the Knesset.

Eisenkot's bloc moves to reshape Knesset committees and advance legislation

The Arrangements Committee shapes much of the Knesset’s work before a government is formed. With Folkman at its head, the change bloc can start organizing the committees it needs to advance its agenda, from establishing an inquiry into October 7 to rolling back parts of the judicial reform.

Each of those initiatives will need its own majority. But the change bloc can already influence which proposals get a hearing, which committees take them up, and how quickly they advance. If the coalition talks drag on, Netanyahu could spend weeks as caretaker prime minister while his opponents decide what gets attention in the Knesset.

The change bloc is not waiting to see who forms a coalition in the end, or what its makeup will be,  before trying to establish legislative facts on the ground.

The more consequential choice than chairman of the Arrangements Committee is who will succeed Ohana. And here Eisenkot, with the agreement of the other change bloc leaders, made an interesting choice: Matan Kahana.

The choice was reportedly between Kahana and Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid. Kahana is religious, a former fighter pilot and a man of the political Right. Choosing him over Lapid helps Eisenkot frame the shift in parliamentary control as a center-right transition, not a left-wing takeover.

And opposition to Benjamin Netanyahu has never defined Kahana’s political identity the way it has Lapid’s. That gives him more room to build consensus as speaker.

If Eisenkot still hopes to draw any elements of Likud, or even the Religious Zionist Party, into his coalition down the line, Kahana is a sensible choice.

Kahana's speaker nomination could complicate ties with haredi parties

That signal may be well received on the Right. It is likely to land differently with the haredi parties.

There were two ministers in the Bennett-Lapid government of 2021- 2022 who particularly annoyed the haredi parties.  One was Yoaz Hendel, the communications minister, who was determined to break the haredi monopoly over the kosher phones widely used in the community. The other was Kahana.

As religious services minister, Kahana pushed to open kashrut certification to competition, empower municipal rabbis to convene conversion courts, and bring more women onto local religious councils. The battle over kashrut became so bitter that United Torah Judaism’s Moshe Gafni shouted “Antiochus!” at him in the plenum, likening the religious Zionist minister and IDF veteran of nearly 30 years to the villain of Hanukkah.

The conversion proposal died with the Bennett-Lapid government. The kashrut reform lasted longer, but Shas got it finally repealed in July, just four months before Eisenkot chose Kahana for speaker.

Then there is haredi conscription. In a Knesset speech two years ago, Kahana put his position plainly: “We all enlist, we all serve, and we all fight for one another.” He went on to say that those who decline to serve should get nothing from the state, whether they are secular Israelis from Tel Aviv or haredim from Beitar Illit. The third of Eisenkot’s four principles is one Kahana has championed in his own right.

Haredi parties could give Eisenkot 61 seats, but conscription remains an obstacle

That history matters because one of the options reportedly under discussion, the one Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman favors, is a government that includes the 13 MKs of Shas and United Torah Judaism. Those 13 seats would give the 48-seat change bloc exactly 61. That makes the option attractive on paper and leaves Eisenkot with the question of what kind of draft law all those parties could live with.

If that is the direction Eisenkot intends to take, he could have used the choice of speaker to extend a gesture of goodwill to the haredi parties. Choosing Kahana is not exactly that gesture and may signal something else.

Folkman’s election and Kahana’s likely elevation prove that Eisenkot has a majority to take power away from Netanyahu in the Knesset.  He has not proven, however, that he also has a majority that can put him in the Prime Minister’s Office.  And therein lies the country’s coalition conundrum.