Israeli opposition leaders vow to remove Netanyahu quickly but path unclear

The Israeli opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot pledged Tuesday to form a government quickly to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but remained unclear on how, with divisions over whether to ally with Arab lawmakers.

Meeting for the first time since an election a week ago brought an inconclusive result, the five opposition party heads consulted on strategy at a hotel in Herzliya, the tech industry hub north of Tel Aviv where former military chief Eisenkot lives.

In a joint statement, the party leaders said their goal was forming a government "as quickly as possible and preventing Israel from being dragged into another election".

They stood by four benchmarks set out by Eisenkot including that any parties in the government recognise Israel as a Jewish state and denounce Hamas as a terrorist group -- conditions that could exclude some Arab lawmakers.

The leaders "agreed on the need to form a Zionist government at the earliest opportunity, based on the four principles set out by Eisenkot", it said.

Unsourced Israeli media reports said the leaders put more emphasis on forming an alliance with Orthodox Jewish parties, traditional backers of Netanyahu, than with Arab parties.

Arab lawmakers could bring Eisenkot a majority which neither bloc now holds.

Arab-majority parties last week won 19 seats in the 120-member parliament on the back of anger over the hard-right Netanyahu government's rhetoric towards Arab citizens of Israel.

Eisenkot's diverse opposition bloc won 48 seats while Netanyahu's camp secured 53, of which 27 are from his Likud party.

Despite their diverging views on various issues, including the role of Arab lawmakers, all opposition bloc leaders in Eisenkot's bloc have said they would back him to form the next government.

"We don't have time -- we must act with great urgency," Naftali Bennett, a right-leaning former prime minister whose party came in third, told reporters as he promised to back Eisenkot.

Public opinion polls conducted before the election showed that Jewish Israeli opposition supporters are divided over including Arab parties in government while right-wing Israelis are adamantly opposed.

Yousef Jabareen, the head of the largest Arab-majority party in the next parliament, told AFP that the opposition needed to accept "political reality" and team up to remove Netanyahu.

Arab-Israelis are descendants of Palestinians who remained after Israel's creation in 1948 and account for around 20 percent of the population today.

The only opposition leader to openly back an alliance with Arab parties is Yair Golan, head of the left-wing party the Democrats, who said it was racist to exclude the Arab minority.

Golan met with Israeli-Arab leaders before heading to the opposition talks. He promised his party would work to tackle high crime in Arab areas, a key concern of the community, and work to bring "prosperity and equality" for the minority.

But Avigdor Liberman, a right-wing member of Eisenkot's bloc, has adamantly opposed including Arab parties, although he also said he wants to avoid a new election.

Netanyahu spent the campaign painting Arab parties as untrustworthy and stoking fears of a Palestinian state.

On Monday, Netanyahu called for a "broad national government" and said he should lead it as his Likud, while losing ground, remained the single largest party.

No opposition leader has voiced openness to a unity government with Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving prime minister, pointing to his divisiveness, the corruption charges against him and his failure to prevent the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.

Netanyahu ruled out a coalition with Arab-majority lists, alleging that the parties "support terrorism and deny the existence of the Jewish state".

Leaders of Arab-Israeli parties have unanimously condemned the October 7 attack by Hamas without describing the Palestinian Islamist movement as a terror group.

Although the leader of the Raam party has recognised Israel as a "Jewish state", other leaders have rejected that definition.

Presenting a petition to opposition leaders, Merav Svirsky -- whose parents were killed by Hamas fighters on October 7 and whose brother was kidnapped and then killed -- said Eisenkot must not form a coalition with Netanyahu.

"Any cooperation with members of the government of the massacre would legitimise the abandonment we went through," she told reporters.