Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician tasked with forming the country's next government, on Friday accused caretaker prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu of fuelling what he called a racist campaign against Israel's Arab minority, after Netanyahu sought to delegitimise the community's lawmakers by linking them to Hamas.
The intervention marked a rare case of a prominent Jewish political leader forcefully defending Arab Israelis, who account for more than 20 percent of the population.
Writing on X, Eisenkot said Arab citizens of Israel were an integral part of the Israeli story and had been subjected to what he described as a racist and aggressive campaign of delegitimisation, driven by the outgoing prime minister and those around him for political purposes. He called the effort to marginalise and collectively vilify them a profound violation of the principles of civic responsibility.
The dispute carries significant political weight. Two Arab-majority parties, Raam and the Joint List, won a combined 19 seats in last month's election, taking nearly a sixth of the 120-seat parliament and potentially emerging as kingmakers in Eisenkot's efforts to assemble a governing coalition.
Netanyahu and his allies have repeatedly attacked Arab party leaders for declining to label Hamas a terror group following its unprecedented 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. All leaders of the Arab parties condemned that attack, in which Arab Israelis, descendants of Palestinians who remained in what became Israel in 1948, were among those killed. Netanyahu has also repeatedly alleged electoral fraud by Arab-majority parties, claims that electoral authorities have rejected.
In a speech, Netanyahu lamented that the two Arab lists refused to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, even though Raam leader Mansour Abbas has done so in the past, and claimed they sought to establish either an Islamic state or a nationalist Palestinian state. During the same ceremony, national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir heckled Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen during his oath of allegiance, accusing him of having "pledged allegiance to Hamas".
Eisenkot said it was entirely legitimate to disagree with representatives of the Arab parties, even to strongly disapprove of some of them. "But it is neither legitimate nor acceptable to malign an entire community, and I will not allow it," he said.
President Isaac Herzog gave Eisenkot the mandate to form a new government on Sunday, after consultations in which a majority of political parties, including the two Arab lists, recommended him for the role.
The path ahead is far from certain. One of Eisenkot's right-wing allies, Avigdor Lieberman, has said he will withdraw from the coalition if Arab Israelis are part of it. If Eisenkot fails to build a government within 28 days, he may request a 14-day extension, and should he still fall short, the mandate would pass to another lawmaker, most likely Netanyahu.
