The President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, has tasked Gadi Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party and main political rival of Benjamin Netanyahu, with forming a new government. The decision was announced this Saturday, after several days of consultations with the political forces that emerged from the October 27 elections. "I will do everything possible to be worthy," wrote Eisenkot on X, where he called for the formation of "a national emergency government."

“A Jewish and Arab government, together” was the demand repeated last Saturday at one of the demonstrations in Jerusalem after the elections. On the street, some Israelis were asking that Arab parties be able to participate in the future government. In Parliament, this possibility remains the main obstacle to ousting Benjamin Netanyahu from power.

Gadi Eisenkot is gaining ground in the race to be tasked with forming Israel's next government. The former Chief of Staff of the Israeli army has garnered 67 recommendations, compared to Benjamin Netanyahu's 46, placing him in the lead during presidential consultations. The options for Eisenkot have increased after the ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism announced that it will not recommend any candidate to President Isaac Herzog, and the two Arab factions expressed their support for the former general. The endorsements, however, do not yet guarantee his investiture.

Trump's huge defeat in Tuesday's midterm elections has been described as a tsunami. And it certainly is, because the earthquake continues to send waves, and it is sending them all over the world.

There are few political figures who have turned their survival into such a defining trait of their career as Benjamin Netanyahu. At 77, after decades of dominating the Israeli right, he remains at the center of Israel's politics despite diplomatic crises, massive protests against his policies, judicial investigations, and even the most serious security failure in the country's history, on October 7, 2023. Tuesday's elections have once again demonstrated his resilience: the Likud was the most voted force, even though its bloc has lost its parliamentary majority.

The results of the Israeli elections forecast an even more polarized political situation. In this context of confusion, the figure of Donald Trump emerges as an arbiter, and it must not be forgotten that the President of the United States has always shown particular deference toward the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Likud, led by Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu, was the most voted party in Tuesday's Israeli elections, but it nevertheless received a significant electoral punishment and was left very far from being able to form a government, even by adding the ultra-Orthodox, Zionist, and far-right partners that have supported it in recent years. Together, they would total fifty seats, when the majority in the Knesset is sixty-one (in the previous legislature, Netanyahu and his partners had sixty-three). There is a consensus among analysts that Netanyahu has paid at the polls for the radicalism of his last term, which many attribute precisely to the extreme positions of his partners. Two ministers, in particular, the fanatical head of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, and the cynical head of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, from the Religious Zionist Party, also far-right and ultra-nationalist, have personified anti-Palestinian radicalism and are the direct reason for the strong mobilization shown in these elections by Arab Israeli voters, who have gone to the polls in mass. If an electoral repeat is not forced, the Arab parties will be key in the formation of a new executive led by Gadi Eisenkot and his party Yashar (which defines itself as center-right, although this is a quite elastic label) and which could include secular right-wing forces such as Israel Beitenu, or center-left ones like The Democrats. Whatever happens, however, Netanyahu may lose the immunity that has given him impunity, and have to account for pending corruption charges before the Israeli justice system. Or be tried by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, for the genocide in Gaza.

With the results of the parliamentary elections in Israel on the table, some possible scenarios are opening up, although caution must accompany speculation, because they are very diverse scenarios and can easily go in one direction or the other. The only thing clear in principle is that Benjamin Netanyahu has lost the majority in Parliament, largely due to the high number of seats obtained by the Arab parties.

Israel is heading towards a new stage of political uncertainty, as the count of Tuesday's elections progresses, with 85% of the vote scrutinized. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party, Likud, has been the most voted, but it would not obtain enough seats to form a government with the current coalition partners: it would remain with 53 seats in a 120-seat parliament. The opposition bloc, led by former general Gadi Eisenkot, who is in second place, would remain with 48 seats. At this moment, Likud would obtain 26 seats and Yashar, Eisenkot's party, 21. Amidst these two blocs, the groups representing Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, who would total 17 deputies, could hold the key to governability.

“Do you think war will return?”. In Israel, the question hangs over elections marked by uncertainty. “It's not a question of whether it returns or not, but of when,” more and more people respond, convinced that ceasefires have only postponed a new escalation. While the Israelis vote, the entire region looks towards the same question: whether the results will open a door to diplomacy or if, once the polls are closed, the weapons will speak again.

Israel is holding parliamentary elections this Tuesday that could mark a turning point after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and three years of war and political crisis. Benjamin Netanyahu aspires to remain in power, while the opposition attempts to turn his attrition into a viable alternative. Turnout by midday was 16.68%, according to the electoral board, one of the highest in the last decade.

Benjamin Netanyahu wants to reach the polls with an image of strength: that of a prime minister capable of speaking as an equal with the President of the United States. Nine days before the Israeli elections, Donald Trump offered him an opportunity to project this image. The American president described the Israeli leader as a “warrior prime minister,” expressed his “full and total support” for his reelection, and attributed to him a decisive role in the offensive against Iran, which began in February. But the endorsement has a paradox: it can strengthen Netanyahu among his voters and, at the same time, serve as a reminder that Washington does not always share his priorities.

Returning to Israel has become an arrest for some citizens. Forty-two ultra-Orthodox men who arrived on Tuesday from New York were arrested by military police at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, accused of evading military service. Twenty-seven of them agreed to join the ranks and were released, and thirteen went through a judicial process and were then imprisoned, although they eventually agreed to go into the army and have been released. But two more went directly from the airport to prison for having avoided recruitment for more than 540 days.

The possibility of a new open war with Iran is once again looming over Israel in the final stretch of the election campaign. Less than a week before the legislative elections on October 27th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has intensified threats against Tehran and asserted the need to resume the military offensive. A rhetorical escalation that coincides with reports of bombing plans that Donald Trump allegedly halted and with the surprise visit of US Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, to Israel.

In the Negev desert, near the Gaza Strip, it is hard to imagine that three years ago this place was full of music and dozens of young people dancing until sunrise. Today, at the site where the Nova festival was held there is no music. There are photographs and memorials scattered across the esplanade. A drone flies over the area while Israeli soldiers guard the access points. On one side, 378 trees commemorate the people murdered by Hamas at the festival. The memorial also remembers the 44 attendees who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.

The Israeli government has suggested from the very first moment a supposed role of Iran in the incident that last Wednesday forced a change in the route of a plane covering the journey between Dubai and Tel Aviv. The authorities are investigating it as an attempted attack. Without evidence, Benjamin Netanyahu suggested a day after the events that Tehran could be behind it, and the Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, asserted that it was a "jihadist terrorist attack attempt". This Monday, however, the thesis of an Iranian involvement is losing strength: reports from Israel and the United States cited by media such as the BBC point out that the attacker was a "lone wolf".

“The Flydubai flight and the indomitability of the Jews”, “The avoided Flydubai tragedy highlights Israeli courage” or “Extraordinary heroism and nearly miraculous circumstances prevent an air catastrophe” are some of the headlines that can be read these days in Israel. Two days after the incident with Flydubai flight FZ1073, the feeling in the country is one of having dodged a tragedy, but also of having discovered a crack in air security, in one of the countries most obsessed with this issue.

On the eve of the election campaign, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asserted this Thursday that the pilot accused of trying to crash a flight heading to Tel Aviv on Wednesday, which was carrying mostly Israeli citizens, underwent a process of "radical Islamist indoctrination." He stated this in an interview with Fox News, in which he also hinted at a possible role for Iran in the episode that is being investigated as an attempted attack.

At the Tel Aviv Hostages Square, about 300 people listened this Monday evening to testimonies from relatives and survivors of the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. They were wearing t-shirts, caps, and pins with photographs of the hostages. Amidst banners with names and faces, a recreation of a tunnel recalled the conditions in which the kidnapped were held in Gaza. A man dressed as the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, held a banner with a blunt message: "Nobody told me!".The protest comes at a time when the question of what the Israeli government knew before the Hamas attack has returned to the center of Israeli politics. This time the debate passes through Abu Dhabi. On Sunday, the prime minister traveled in secret to the United Arab Emirates to meet with its president, Mohamed bin Zayed. The reason for the visit was to ask him to deny that he had warned him before October 7th that Hamas was preparing an attack, according to sources cited by Associated Press.Netanyahu's office has denied this version and explained that the visit aimed to “strengthen bilateral relations and address regional challenges.” The Emirates government has given a similar version of the visit, without making any mention of a specific request from the Israeli leader.The visit, lasting about four hours and without leaving the airport, as reported by the Israeli media outlet Channel 12, comes amidst weeks of controversy. A few days ago, the newspaper Haaretz published that the Emirates had allegedly alerted Israel that Hamas was preparing a major operation against the country. According to this information, Bin Zayed had personally communicated the warning to Netanyahu, but the notice was not sent to the main Israeli intelligence agencies or the army. Netanyahu denies this version.

The decadent speech delivered by Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu before the UN General Assembly, which included insults and fallacies against the delegates who left the room in protest, had the sole value of reminding the international community that the genocide in Gaza, and the illegal occupation of the West Bank by Israel's far-right and fundamentalist government, continues its course. The massacre of October 7th and 8th of Israeli citizens by Hamas, an unprecedented attack due to its violence, with about 1,400 civilians killed, was met with an immediate response of a genocide recognized as such by a committee and an independent commission of the United Nations itself, as well as Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders, and a list of the most relevant international entities and organizations. More than 75,000 Palestinians have died there, of whom more than 20,000 are minors. In this case, it cannot be said that the slaughter has no precedent, because the hostilities of the Israeli army, trained with the idea of treating the Palestinian population as subhumans who must be exterminated while young so they do not grow up to be murderous adults, goes back a long way. Of both things, the Hamas massacre and the beginning of Israel's genocidal response, it will be three years in a few days. In Gaza, more than ninety percent of homes have been destroyed, the arrival of international aid has been obstructed, doctors and journalists have been murdered, and the population has been subjected to a health and food crisis (that is, famine and infectious diseases), among other war crimes. In the West Bank, these days we have seen again the images of Zionist bulldozers razing olive groves, thus destroying the main source of income for many Palestinian families.Netanyahu is the most visible face of a coalition government that includes ministers such as the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who toasted with champagne in the Knesset after approving the establishment of the death penalty for Palestinians considered terrorists, and who asks that every night 30 or 40 people be executed in Gaza, until “clearing” the area of its Palestinian population. Or like the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, who boasts that the Gaza Strip is “a real estate gold mine” that the government of Israel is sharing with that of the USA. Since Netanyahu referred to the delegates who left the United Nations hall as “moral cowards,” we must understand that his depraved ministers and he himself consider themselves examples of moral strength. Invoking the right to defense, or much worse, the memory of the Shoah, as a justification for these atrocities does nothing but intensify their baseness.We emphasize that in this article we have referred to the crimes of the government of Israel. Not "of Israel", a confusion that our local Zionism always tries to promote, seasoned with the ineffable touch of indecent victimhood that seeks to equate Catalonia and Israel as peoples joined in misfortune. The decrepit, offensive image of Netanyahu at the UN serves as their mirror.