Tom Hussain

Eisenkot has the first mandate and will get the chance to form a government first, but the numbers behind his 67 show why he got it and why it will be hard to turn into a government. 1) The 67 splits into 48 from Zionist parties and 19 from Ra'am and the Joint List. Netanyahu has 46, or 53 with UTJ. Neither side has a Zionist-only majority, and Eisenkot is further from one. 2) Even with UTJ, Eisenkot's Zionist parties reach only 55. He can't get to 61 without the Arab lists unless Shas moves too. That explains why his camp talks about the Haredi parties, plural. 3) His four conditions keep Ra'am and the Joint List out of the coalition but leave room for their outside support. It is the 2021 Bennett-Lapid model, with the Arab parties outside the cabinet instead of inside it. 4) The universal service condition blocks the Haredi path. If he softens it, Likud says he dropped a condition. If he keeps it, UTJ stays out. Regev is already making that charge. 5) Taking the Knesset first is his strongest move. The Speaker controls the agenda, the votes and the committees, so Netanyahu gains less by running out the clock. 6) The Speaker vote needs 61, and he has 48 without the Arab lists. That first vote will show publicly who his majority depends on. The bloc still hasn't agreed on a candidate. 7) Netanyahu stays prime minister through every failed round. Likud's goal is to split the 48 by appealing to Bennett and Liberman, not to win Arab votes. 8) Eisenkot's pledge to back military action only against "direct and immediate threats" raises the cost of Netanyahu opening a new front during the caretaker period. 9) Yashar! is using the US aid cutoff to argue that repairing ties with Washington requires a new government. That also justifies the "emergency" label. Herzog controls the timing and the extension, and he is still pressing for power-sharing. If he leans toward a rotation, a narrow Eisenkot government becomes one option rather than the expected outcome. Eisenkot is running two strategies at once. Taking the Knesset needs Arab votes in the open. Courting the Haredim needs him to say he doesn't rely on them. Both can work for a few weeks, but not past the first vote that requires 61. It looks like the best he can hope for is to block Netanyahu from forming a government and impose another election.

This is absolute bullshit. A sleight of hand to try to get rid of Congressional oversight and satisfy public opinion while quite possibly giving Israel EVEN MORE MONEY: 1) Israel’s aid runs under a 2016 memorandum signed by Obama. It commits $38 billion from 2019 through 2028, about $3.8 billion a year. Trump is announcing an end almost two years early and hasn’t said how. 2) Presidents don’t control this money. Congress appropriates it every year and wrote the amounts into law in the 2021 defense bill. An agreement between Trump and Netanyahu can’t cancel money Congress has already voted through. 3) Josh Paul ran arms transfers at the State Department. He called a January cutoff “not plausible,” since the funding is built into current and pending legislation. His guess is that Trump was talking about the next ten-year deal, which starts in 2029. 4) Fox asked whether he meant cash, weapons or missile defense. “I’m giving four in any way you want to define it,” Trump said. The White House has put out no plan and no clarification since. 5) Israel’s own officials heard about it from the TV. A senior defense official told Kan they “did not expect this announcement, certainly not today.” Finance Ministry staff said nothing in writing had come from Netanyahu’s office, and next year’s budget already counts on the money. 6) 60 Israel’s procurement plans count on more than $20 billion in US military financing for the decade after 2028. Nobody budgets like that if they expect the money to stop in December. 7) He told Fox why he was doing it. “Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like an El-Sayed when they don’t need it?” He said it on the morning of the midterms. El-Sayed was up six points in Michigan’s Senate race, and 55% of Michigan voters oppose military aid to Israel. Trump called the aid a “bad talking point.” 8) While Trump talks about ending aid, Congress is building a new channel for it. The 2027 defense bill sets up a US-Israel defense technology program run through the Pentagon, covering joint development and co-production of drones, missile defense and AI. 9) Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official, says that money would escape the Leahy laws, the transparency rules and the annual vote in Congress, and would probably grow. 10) Israel can still buy anything it wants from the US. Trump said so himself, and he added that America will help “if they need it.” The bombs keep shipping, and the bombs are what most opponents of aid object to. The 2028 memorandum is still in force, Congress still holds the purse, and the Pentagon money is being set up out of view. What Trump actually cut on election day was a line that was costing Republicans votes in Michigan. This is a bunch of crap. Aid to Israel has to be stopped for real.