The president of the Israeli regime, Isaac Herzog, has formally tasked former military chief Gadi Eisenkot with attempting to form a new ruling cabinet, dealing a fresh setback to the embattled prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid deepening political paralysis in the occupied territories.

Herzog’s office announced on Saturday that Eisenkot, leader of the Yashar party, would receive the mandate in a ceremony at the president’s residence on Sunday.

The former army chief of staff will have 28 days, with a possible 14-day extension, to cobble together a coalition capable of commanding a majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Netanyahu remains in place as caretaker prime minister in the meantime.

The decision follows the October 27 election, the first since the October 7, 2023 events that exposed catastrophic intelligence and military failures under Netanyahu’s watch.

Final results left neither camp with a clear path to power. Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist bloc secured 53 seats, down sharply from its previous majority, with Likud as the largest single party at 27 seats.

Eisenkot’s Jewish opposition bloc won 48 seats (Yashar 21, Together 12, The Democrats 8, and Yisrael Beytenu 7). Arab parties representing Palestinian citizens of the 1948 territories achieved a record 19 seats combined (Joint List 11 and Ra’am 8), nearly doubling their previous representation.

During consultations with Herzog, 67 lawmakers recommended Eisenkot for the first attempt at forming a ruling cabinet, compared with only 46 for Netanyahu. United Torah Judaism, a traditional ultra-Orthodox ally of Netanyahu, abstained.

Arab parties, citing the racist policies of Netanyahu and his far-right partners, also backed Eisenkot. Yet Eisenkot and most of his Zionist allies have refused to enter a formal coalition with those parties, despite the arithmetic that would otherwise give them a majority.

This exposes the structural contradictions of the regime. Even after losing its parliamentary majority, the Netanyahu camp remains the largest bloc, while the so-called opposition continues to reject partnerships with Palestinian citizens inside the 1948 lines.

Potential routes for Eisenkot -- a fragile minority regime reliant on external Arab support, a deal with ultra-Orthodox parties demanding draft exemptions, or a unity arrangement with Netanyahu -- face steep obstacles. Both Eisenkot and Netanyahu have previously ruled out power-sharing with each other.

The deadlock underscores the regime’s growing internal fragility after years of aggressive expansionism, settlement violence in the West Bank, and the failure of Netanyahu’s long tenure.

High turnout of nearly 78 percent reflected public dissatisfaction, yet produced no stable outcome.

If Eisenkot cannot form a ruling cabinet, the mandate could pass to Netanyahu or trigger yet another election, prolonging the caretaker status of a prime minister already facing corruption cases and accountability demands over the October 7 failures.

For the resistance axis across the region, the spectacle of the Zionist entity’s political paralysis offers further evidence of its declining cohesion and capacity, even as it continues occupation policies and military operations.

The regime’s inability to resolve its internal crises while maintaining its regional confrontations only highlights the unsustainability of its project.