JERUSALEM — Israel's new parliament, the 26th Knesset, is sworn in on Tuesday, with Benjamin Netanyahu remaining prime minister at its head but stripped of the majority he commanded in the last one — and with his rival Gadi Eisenkot, not Netanyahu, holding the president's mandate to form the next government.

Source: Reuters via GhanaMMA, Nov 10 2026

President Isaac Herzog will address the inaugural session at 4:00 p.m. (1400 GMT), Agence France-Presse reported. Neither camp holds a majority in the 120-seat parliament: Netanyahu's bloc slipped to 53 seats, down from the decisive 68 it commanded previously; Eisenkot's core opposition bloc has 48; and a record 19 seats are held by lawmakers from Arab-majority parties that are vehemently opposed to Netanyahu and his hard-right government.

Source: AFP via Warri Aproko News, Nov 10 2026

Herzog gave Eisenkot, a former military chief who leads the Yashar party, the mandate to form a government on Sunday. Eisenkot has 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension — a first deadline around December 6 — to assemble a coalition of at least 61 seats. Until a new government is sworn in, Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader, stays on as caretaker prime minister.

The first political clash will be over the speaker's chair. The incumbent, Amir Ohana, is a Netanyahu loyalist from the Likud party. Under parliamentary rules the speaker vote can take place as early as the inaugural session and must happen before a new government is sworn in. The opposition will put forward Matan Kahana — like Eisenkot, a former senior military figure — as speaker, Eisenkot's Yashar party said, while Avigdor Lieberman is to be nominated as chair of the foreign affairs and defence committee, AFP reported.

The timing is already disputed. Three parties in the Eisenkot bloc wrote to the outgoing speaker on Thursday asking that his successor be elected at the opening session — a timing the Israel Democracy Institute's Assaf Shapira said was the more common practice. Ohana responded that it was customary to elect the speaker on the day a new government is sworn in. Key opposition figure Naftali Bennett vowed to act 'urgently' on the bloc's priorities: 'We will take control of the Knesset as quickly as possible.'

'The lack of a new government does not infringe upon the Knesset's prerogatives,' Shapira told Reuters — meaning the new parliament can legislate against the caretaker government from day one. At the top of the opposition's list is a commission of inquiry into the security failures that allowed Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack, the deadliest day in Israel's history. Netanyahu's government has opposed a national, independent commission with broad powers and has instead supported a review by political appointees; even before a government is formed, the new parliament could set up a special committee whose findings would hand over to an eventual commission, Shapira said. Eisenkot has declared forming the commission an immediate priority.

Lawmakers could also move to repeal signature Netanyahu-era laws — including the judicial overhaul that limited the Supreme Court's powers and made it easier to remove the attorney general, and the exemptions that excuse ultra-Orthodox Jews from military service. Repealing them is procedurally simple, Shapira said, though passing new laws could take weeks of coordination. Eisenkot has also warned military chiefs that Netanyahu does not have a mandate to resume the war against Iran — a statement Reuters noted was more about politics than law, with Netanyahu still in charge of national security.

The coalition maths remains brutal for both men. Eisenkot could reach 61 with the 19 Arab-Israeli lawmakers voting for his government without joining it, but Lieberman has said he will not allow Eisenkot to rely on Arab-Israelis to come to power and has instead proposed an alliance with the ultra-Orthodox parties, which hold 13 seats — despite his years of attacking their draft exemption. An alliance with either group would likely be fragile, AFP noted: Arab lawmakers are likely to object if Eisenkot carries out another major offensive in Gaza, and Eisenkot, who has largely backed Netanyahu's war decisions, has vowed to crack down on extremist settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.

The swearing-in is the next step in a deadlock that began with the October 27 election and continued when Herzog handed Eisenkot the mandate over Netanyahu. Read: Eisenkot receives the mandate to form a government

What happens next: the speaker vote will be the first hard count of the new parliament's real balance of power, and Eisenkot's coalition clock runs to early December. If he fails, the mandate can pass to another lawmaker — with Netanyahu remaining caretaker prime minister throughout.