Netanyahu offers Eisenkot a unity government while Tibi shows the messages sent to block him

Netanyahu issued his appeal on Saturday evening, 14 November, urging Gadi Eisenkot — the Yashar leader tasked by President Isaac Herzog with forming a government — to “enter a room, without preconditions” and set aside boycotts, framing the offer around Iran’s nuclear programme and the conscription question. Of his Thursday conversation with Eisenkot he said: “This meeting only strengthened my understanding of how necessary it is to establish at this time a national unity government.” He proposed calling it “the Government of Hope” and said a narrow government, or one relying on “supporters of terrorism” — a phrase Haaretz notes he applies to the Arab parties — could not meet the moment. The Times of Israel liveblog timestamps the statement at 7:37 pm and Eisenkot’s reply at 8:44 pm: “another spin.” Yashar noted that Yashar–Likud talks were already scheduled for Sunday. ToI’s added line that Eisenkot remains intent on ousting Netanyahu personally is attributed to unnamed Yashar sources speaking to Channel 12.

The weekend’s loudest story in the Israeli press came first. On Friday evening Joint List MK Ahmad Tibi turned his phone screen to the Channel 12 cameras to display what he said were WhatsApp messages from Natan Eshel, Netanyahu’s former bureau chief and longtime confidant. “I’m going to do something I’ve never done before,” Tibi said, per Israel National News, before telling Netanyahu: “You sent your personal adviser to me a week before the election, the day after it, and again after the results were published.” He said the approaches sought to dissuade the Arab parties from joining Eisenkot, and that a Likud minister had phoned him with the same request. The screenshots were shown on air but have not been independently authenticated, and no response from Netanyahu, Eshel, Likud or the Prime Minister’s Office appeared in the material available to this desk. Channel 12 reported separately that Eshel also contacted Ra’am chairman Mansour Abbas.

The count comes on Tuesday. Yashar submitted signatures to Speaker Amir Ohana on 10 November, the day the 26th Knesset was sworn in, demanding a vote to replace him with Yashar’s No. 2, Matan Kahana; Haaretz puts the signatories at 67. Ohana called the motion “unusual” and scheduled the vote for 17 November. Tibi said his faction would back Kahana. Eisenkot has also agreed committee nominations with Naftali Bennett, Yair Golan, Avigdor Liberman and Yair Lapid — Liberman for Foreign Affairs and Defense, Roy Folkman for Arrangements, Liran Avishar Ben-Horin for Finance. The arithmetic behind all of it: 53 seats for the pro-Netanyahu bloc, 48 for the Jewish-led opposition, 19 for the Arab factions on 77.9 percent turnout and 5,716,665 votes cast, per the Central Elections Committee.

Assessment: The unity offer is not addressed to Eisenkot. It is addressed to the 48 Jewish-led seats that cannot reach 61 without the 19 Arab ones, and its function is to make Tuesday’s roll-call look like a choice between a respectable coalition and a dependency Netanyahu has spent a fortnight calling illegitimate. Tibi’s screenshots, if authenticated, do not expose hypocrisy so much as pricing: the same bloc being denounced in Chagall Hall was being courted by phone. Distrust three things pending confirmation — unverified screenshots with no denial on the record, a Channel 12 anonymous-source claim about Eisenkot’s intentions, and the gap between 67 signatures on paper and 61 hands raised in a chamber.