Not So Fast: Netanyahu Isn’t Out Yet, Despite That Viral “Bibi Is Out” Post

What’s True

The seat math is real. In the Oct. 27 election, Netanyahu’s bloc fell from 68 seats to 53, with his Likud party at 27. Eisenkot’s opposition bloc won 48, led by his Yashar party with 21. Arab-led parties won a record 19: 11 for the Joint List and eight for Ra’am (Guardian; Anadolu). It takes 61 seats to govern, so neither main bloc has a majority on its own (Times of Israel).

The “the results stand” part is real too. Netanyahu and Likud claimed the vote was stolen through foreign interference in the Arab vote, without offering evidence, after reports that Israeli authorities were investigating alleged Qatari meddling (JTA). On Sunday, Central Elections Committee chair Noam Sohlberg, Shin Bet chief David Zini and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara said the results would stand even if those suspicions were proven. Qatar has denied any involvement (AP; Al Jazeera).

And the opposition is lining up behind Eisenkot. Naftali Bennett’s Together party, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu and Yair Golan’s Democrats all say they’ll recommend him, and both Arab parties are expected to do the same (Anadolu; Jerusalem Post). If they all do, he’d have 67 recommendations to Netanyahu’s 53 (Jerusalem Post).

What’s False

Recommending someone for prime minister isn’t the same as joining his government, and that’s where the post goes wrong. Joint List leader Yousef Jabareen told The Guardian on Monday that his party is ready to help replace Netanyahu but is not planning to be in the coalition. He said it would consider supporting a government from the outside, and that Eisenkot’s conditions are “more relevant for parties who would be in the coalition” (Guardian; Al Jazeera).

Those conditions include recognizing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, national service for all and treating Hamas as a terror group (Guardian). Nobody has reported that either Arab party accepted them. Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, has signaled it could join an Eisenkot government, but no agreement has been announced (Al Jazeera). Anadolu put it plainly: the opposition and Arab parties “have not agreed to form a governing coalition” (Anadolu). Ynet reports Eisenkot is weighing a minority government with outside backing from Arab and ultra-Orthodox parties, which is a very different arrangement from the one described in the post (Ynet).

The Nov. 10 date is real, but it’s for something else. That’s when the newly elected Knesset holds its opening session, where members are sworn in and choose a speaker (Anadolu). No prime minister can be sworn in until someone has been given the mandate, put together a government and won a confidence vote. None of that has happened.

What Happens Next

Official results go to President Isaac Herzog on Wednesday, Nov. 4, and his consultations start that evening. He’ll hear from every party, smallest first, over Wednesday and Thursday, with Likud last (Jerusalem Post). He then has to pick a candidate, and the law sets a deadline of Nov. 11, though he can move sooner (Pioneer).

The nominee, widely expected to be Eisenkot, then gets 28 days to form a government, with a possible 14-day extension (Jerusalem Post; Al Jazeera). If that fails, Herzog can give someone else a shot, and if nobody manages it, Israel could head toward another election (Pioneer). Through all of this, Netanyahu remains caretaker prime minister, a process that could run into next year (Pioneer).

The biggest obstacle may be inside Eisenkot’s own camp. Liberman is backing Eisenkot for prime minister but has ruled out a minority government that relies on Arab support (Times of Israel). Without Liberman’s seven seats, the math gets tighter. And Ynet reports that Netanyahu has privately said he isn’t completely ruling out any option, including a rotation with Eisenkot, despite Likud’s public line (Ynet). In other words, there are still several ways this could go.

Our Take: Not So Fast

This is opinion. We’re not taking a side on who should run Israel. That’s for Israeli voters and the Knesset. Our point is narrower: “it’s over” posts tend to arrive days or weeks before the process they’re describing actually finishes.

That gap is where a lot of viral misinformation lives. A real headline (Netanyahu’s bloc loses its majority) gets merged with a likely next step (Arab parties back Eisenkot) and a real date (Nov. 10), and the result sounds like a done deal. Each piece is close enough to the news to feel believable, which is exactly why it travels. We saw the same pattern with the speculation that followed Chris Murphy’s stroke, and we’ll almost certainly see it again around the U.S. vote covered in our 2026 midterms guide.

Coalition politics is slow and messy, and it rarely fits in a single post. If Eisenkot does become prime minister, it will be after a confidence vote in the Knesset, not on a date picked in advance. Until then, the accurate version is less exciting: Netanyahu is weakened, the opposition has the numbers to make a real run at replacing him, and nothing is settled.

The Background

Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Eisenkot is a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces who led the Yashar party into this election as the head of the opposition bloc (Al Jazeera). Only one Arab party has ever been part of an Israeli governing coalition: Ra’am, in 2021, in a government that lasted less than two years (Al Jazeera).

Our hero image pairs Eisenkot, left, in a June 2026 portrait, with Netanyahu, right, in Washington in July 2025. For more stories about what the internet is arguing about, see our Zeitgeist section, our internet culture coverage and the rest of our top stories.