Israel lost the elections: An open letter to President Isaac Herzog - opinion

Dear President Isaac Herzog,

Israel has voted. The ballots have been cast, the people have spoken, yet the country appears to have emerged from one of its most consequential elections without a clear winner.

Likud may be the largest party. The opposition may claim a mandate for change. Arab parties may wield considerable influence over the next government’s formation. But beyond the arithmetic of Knesset seats lies a more disturbing conclusion.

Israel lost the elections.

Not because democracy failed. Israelis exercised their democratic rights and demonstrated that the democratic spirit remains alive.

Israel lost because the election resolved little of the conflict dividing the nation. Millions awakened convinced that their country’s future remained at stake, regardless of who eventually forms a coalition.

Mr. President, this presents perhaps the most consequential opportunity of your presidency.

When democracy becomes existential

Democracy was never intended to guarantee that everyone wins. It was designed to ensure that losing an election does not mean losing one’s country. I trust that you have heard the conversations of those who claimed that if the outcome was not to their liking, they would plan on leaving Israel.

A healthy democracy requires more than majority rule. It requires confidence that institutions will endure, political opponents remain legitimate, and another election offers another opportunity to change direction.

Yet Israel has increasingly transformed electoral competition into an existential struggle. For too many, victory by the opposing bloc is portrayed not as an undesirable outcome but as a national catastrophe.

That is dangerous for any democracy, particularly one confronting Israel’s security challenges.

We remain engaged across military, diplomatic, economic, and cognitive fronts. Iran and its proxies remain threats.

Efforts to delegitimize the Jewish state continue internationally. The approaching American midterm elections introduce further uncertainty about Washington’s political direction and Israel’s strategic environment.

At home, increased electoral participation among Arab citizens and the potential parliamentary influence of anti-Zionist parties intensify debates over the state’s future character.

Only in the last few hours, before this column was submitted for printing, has it come to light that there is sufficient evidence for the chairman of the Central Elections Committee, Judge Noam Sohlberg, to call for the immediate investigation of the surprisingly massive voter turnout of the Arab Israelis, which was allegedly financed by foreign entities and funneled via Arab organized crime members to Arab Israeli voters.

While this disturbing news might actually invalidate the election results, there is now a need to also investigate, even through the use of polygraph testing, whether any Arab Israeli party leaders were aware of this horrific crime.

Mr. President, my unusual request for polygraph testing of Arab Israeli party leadership is further strengthened by MK Ahmad Tibi’s reported visit to Qatar two days before the elections.

The truth is that the terrible division in the Israeli electorate was an issue before and after this discovery.

Therefore, the opportunity for the Israeli president to find new pathways toward resolving the counterproductive electoral stalemate is, in my humble opinion, unchanged by this disturbing attack on our democracy.

Israel cannot afford political paralysis while its adversaries exploit national weakness. But neither can it afford to mistake another appeal for unity for a solution.

Unity is not the answer

Mr. President, I suggest a different objective.

Not unity. Interoperability.

Unity implies ideological reconciliation that may be impossible in the foreseeable future. Israeli society is divided across political, religious, cultural, and philosophical lines. Democracy should not demand uniformity.

Interoperability means that independent, even competing, groups can function within a common system while preserving their convictions and identities.

We do not all have to row in the same direction. But we must understand that we are all in the same boat.

History demonstrates that cooperation is possible. During the Yom Kippur War, Israelis confronted a common threat despite their differences. After October 7, 2023, citizens across the political and religious spectrum mobilized to defend the country, assist soldiers, and support displaced families.

These experiences did not erase disagreement. They demonstrated that cooperation does not require agreement.

The challenge is to institutionalize that understanding before another emergency forces it upon us.

A remarkable historical parallel

Mr. President, history has placed you in a position reminiscent of one confronted during your father’s presidency.

In 1984, president Chaim Herzog witnessed an election that left neither major political bloc able to govern independently. Israel faced the consequences of war in Lebanon, severe economic distress, and bitter political division.

What followed was an extraordinary accommodation: Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir, representing opposing political traditions, agreed to share power through a rotating premiership.

They did not embrace each other’s ideologies. They found a mechanism through which their movements could function together.

That was interoperability before we had a name for it.

Forty-two years later, another President Herzog faces a divided electorate amid extraordinary challenges. History does not demand that you reproduce the 1984 solution. It reminds us that deadlock need not become paralysis.

Your father’s presidency witnessed a political accommodation transcending electoral arithmetic. Yours could establish a precedent for confidence in the constitutional process itself.

The presidency’s defining test

Your immediate responsibility is constitutionally straightforward but politically extraordinary: deciding which Knesset member receives the mandate to form a government.

The law does not require you to choose the leader of the largest party. Following consultations with parliamentary factions, you must assign the mandate to a consenting member of the Knesset.

That discretion places you in an almost impossible position. Whichever candidate you choose, millions may question not merely your judgment but your impartiality. The problem is not necessarily a lack of good intentions. It is a shortage of public trust.

You have already experienced the consequences of irreconcilable expectations.

The controversy over possible clemency for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed your office under intense domestic and international pressure. US President Donald Trump publicly urged you to act; others demanded the opposite.

Whatever one’s position on clemency, the episode exposed the difficulty of navigating a deeply divisive national question through presidential authority alone.

The decision now before you could be even more consequential. Do not repeat that experience.

An eminent council for national confidence

There is another way.

Before assigning the mandate, establish a small, temporary council of eminent advisers: two individuals of exceptional national standing acceptable to Netanyahu’s bloc, and two similarly respected figures acceptable to Gadi Eisenkot and the principal opposition parties.

They should not be party operatives or political negotiators, but individuals whose integrity, judgment, and service command respect beyond their affiliations.

They would not select the next prime minister. That constitutional responsibility remains yours. Instead, they would examine competing possibilities, advise on a fair process, and help demonstrate that your decision follows balanced deliberation.

The council must supplement, never replace, the legally required consultations with parliamentary factions. Its role and the principles guiding its work should be explained publicly.

There is a relevant precedent. In the 1990s, an independent committee of eminent persons chaired by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker examined dormant Swiss bank accounts linked to Holocaust victims.

Its composition brought together interests divided by profound distrust, establishing a credible investigative process.

The circumstances differed, but the lesson applies: when trust is scarce, respected individuals and credible procedures can help bridge competing interests.

That is interoperability in practice.

The opportunity of a presidency

Israel’s presidency possesses limited executive power but extraordinary symbolic potential. Your greatest contribution may not be the identity of the next prime minister or the survival of the next coalition.

It may be establishing a precedent for public confidence when elections produce uncertainty rather than resolution.

This advisory council would advise the President only during the formal seven-day consultation window, ensuring no appearance of circumventing the statutory faction consultations mandated by the Basic Law.

The council would be a first step toward identifying the minimum common commitments that allow our democracy to survive political disagreement.

Not ideological unity. Not artificial reconciliation. Not abandoning convictions. Rather, accepting that no election should become a referendum on whether the state itself can survive its result.

A government will eventually be formed, or Israel may vote again. Either way, the nation will remain divided.

Mr. President, history rarely offers leaders the opportunity to define their legacy through a single institutional decision. This may be such a moment.

Israel does not need you to make everyone agree. It needs you to help ensure that Israelis can continue to live, compete, and govern together even when they do not.

We are all in the same boat. And its survival must remain more important than who holds the oars.

The writer is a global strategist and a strategic adviser at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. Follow him on X: @jeffkahn