Herzog next government deliberations will begin next week, when Israel’s president starts consultations with party leaders after an inconclusive election left neither camp with a parliamentary majority. Partial results from Tuesday’s vote show neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s camp nor the camp of his rival Gadi Eisenkot secured a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
President Isaac Herzog, known for a mild and unassuming manner, will soon hold the decision that matters most. After the official results are announced, he will meet party representatives and name the lawmaker he believes has the best chance of forming a government. That person is not necessarily the leader of the largest party.
“One thing must be clear, and I said this before the elections too: we must do everything we can, certainly after yesterday, to avoid another round of elections,” he said. “So I expect everyone who comes here to come with an open mind.”
Herzog next government: the timetable after the results
The process that follows is set out in Israel’s Basic Law on the government, and it explains why the coming weeks could run long. Within seven days of the official results being published, the president must assign the task of forming a government to a Knesset member, after consulting the elected factions.
That candidate then has 28 days to build a coalition, and the president can grant up to 14 more days if extra time is needed. If the first candidate fails, Herzog can hand the mandate to a second candidate, who gets 28 days with no extension. After that, 61 lawmakers can propose another candidate within 21 days, failing which Israel heads back to an election.
Until a new government wins a confidence vote in the Knesset, Netanyahu’s outgoing government stays on in a caretaker role. Channel 12 projected Netanyahu’s bloc at 53 seats after regular ballots were counted, short of the 61 needed for a majority.
Herzog has already signalled he will resist outside pressure. Ahead of the vote, he told the US outlet MS Now that he would not let outside influence sway his decision, including from US President Donald Trump.
“I don’t think the president of the United States or anybody else can intervene in my discretion,” he said. “It’s Israel’s democracy and Israel’s constitution, and that’s what counts for me.”
He also told the outlet he would do everything he could to avoid a fresh election, including backing a unity government between Netanyahu and Eisenkot if that proved the only workable path.
A president with his own political past
Herzog, 66, was sworn in as president in 2021 after lawmakers elected him by a landslide. Before that, he served in parliament from 2003 and held the housing, tourism and welfare portfolios. In 2015, as leader of the centre-left Labour party, he tried to oust Netanyahu as prime minister, presenting himself as a calm alternative to the veteran leader, known as “Bibi”.
Netanyahu, now 77, is Israel’s longest-serving premier, having governed on and off for nearly two decades. Tuesday’s election was widely seen as a referendum on his tenure, after he pushed the country sharply to the right and ordered military campaigns in response to Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack.
Herzog has also faced pressure from Trump to grant Netanyahu a pardon in his long-running corruption trials, which could send him to prison if he loses power. In April, Herzog invited Netanyahu’s lawyers and prosecutors to his residence for talks on the issue.
In an interview with AFP in March 2026, Herzog described the ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran as a “historical juncture”, and stressed the importance of talks with Lebanon, with the two sides sitting down the following month for direct negotiations that are still going on.
His father, Chaim Herzog, served as head of military intelligence, then as ambassador to the United Nations, and finally as Israel’s sixth president, from 1983 to 1993. His grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, was the first chief rabbi for Israel’s Ashkenazim. Herzog answers to the nickname “Bougie”, reportedly given to him by his Egyptian-born mother.
What happens next
Feature Pakistan earlier reported how Netanyahu’s bloc led the early vote count and how exit polls pointed to an opposition lead, but neither camp has claimed a majority.
