• Analysis
Gadi Eisenkot Faces Israeli Politics Minefield as Analyst Warns Coalition Odds Are Slim
As Gadi Eisenkot takes on a 45-day mandate from President Isaac Herzog to form a government, pollster Dahlia Scheindlin argues the biggest casualty of Netanyahu-era Israeli politics may be the collapsed US bipartisan consensus - and warns against writing the veteran prime minister off.
Gadi Eisenkot's 45-day race to form a government, undertaken after Israeli President Isaac Herzog entrusted him with assembling a parliamentary majority, is being watched through an unusual lens: the damage Netanyahu-era Israeli politics has done abroad. Dahlia Scheindlin, Israeli author, political analyst, strategic consultant and pollster, discussed with François Picard whether Israel can move beyond Netanyahu.
A bipartisan consensus 'in complete collapse'
For Scheindlin, the deepest mark left by the Netanyahu years is not in the Knesset but in Washington. She attributes the collapse of US bipartisan support for Israel largely to Netanyahu himself, saying he invested the entire relationship in one party and increasingly one person.
"complete collapse of the old bipartisan consensus"
That, in her telling, is what the Netanyahu era has produced in Washington, and it shadows Eisenkot's effort regardless of how the seats fall.
The Arab-party question
Back in Jerusalem, the mandate's arithmetic runs through the Arab lists. Scheindlin calls the opposition's refusal to cooperate with Arab parties a completely self-imposed constraint, asking why those seeking political change keep ruling out partnerships. In her view the question reaches further than seat-counting:
- •Jewish-Arab political cooperation is not merely coalition arithmetic
- •It is, she argues, a fundamental question about Israel's democratic future
'It's always too early to eulogize Netanyahu'
Even so, Scheindlin cautions against declaring the Netanyahu opposition finished. "It's always too early to eulogize Netanyahu politically," she says, pointing to the veteran prime minister's repeatedly demonstrated capacity to survive seemingly insurmountable political crises.
What comes next
Her own read of Eisenkot's effort is unsentimental: the likeliest outcomes, she suggests, are parliamentary stalemate or a structurally fragile israeli minority government. Behind either result stand the pressures she links to the wider crisis - mounting international isolation and the departure of some of the country's brightest and most highly skilled citizens.
