On September 25th, President Rivlin chose Prime Minister Netanyahu as the first candidate to form Israel’s next government. Prime Minister Netanyahu has promised President Rivlin that he will not try to activate Section 12 of “Basic: Law The Government” which triggered the September Knesset Election.
The first candidate receives 28 days to form a government. The first candidate may ask for an extension and the President may grant him up to 14 days. Additionally, the President can choose to break up the 14 days into separate extensions and force the candidate to keep returning for additional extensions. In any event the first candidate cannot hold on to the mandate for more than 42 days.
The first candidate can choose at any point to hand back the mandate to the President early.
If the first candidate fails or chooses to return the mandate early that leaves the President with three options that he has up to three days to consider:
A) He can grant the mandate to the alternative candidate from the first round of consultations.
B) He can conduct another round of consultations in the hopes that an additional candidate will emerge in addition to the alternative candidate from the first consultations. The first candidate cannot be chosen as the second candidate.
In the event the the second candidate that is appointed in A or B fails to form a government the mandate is then transferred from the President to the Knesset.
C) He can choose to inform the Knesset Speaker that there is no second candidate and the mandate is then transferred from the President to the Knesset .
The Knesset then has two options:
A) For the next 21 days the Knesset may put forth a third candidate to the President by submitting 61 MKs signatures. Any MK can participate.
The President will have two days to process the request.
B) If the Knesset fails to put forth their own candidate that will automatically trigger a snap-election.
The third candidate has 14 days to inform the Speaker & President he has formed a government. The Speaker can delay the vote for an additional seven days if necessary.
In the event the third candidate fails to form a government a snap-election will automatically be triggered.
If all three candidates (or two if the President forfeits his ability to choose a second candidate himself) fail to form a government so a snap-election would take place 84-90 days later on a Tuesday.
Section 43 of “Basic Law: The Government” allows the Knesset in certain circumstances, within five days of the Knesset candidate failing to form a government, to push off the election up to 100 days if necessary.
Jeremy's Knesset Insider 
Hag sameach. Over here in the U.S. this is all fascinating. American Jews are, for the most part, rooting against Bibi. I have two questions: who is the PM over the next 4-6 weeks? Is there a Knesset in that period? Who is in it, the old MPs or the newly elected ones? This process could last five months if another election is needed.
Knesset and government are two separate entities (though overlapping somewhat). So yes, the new Knesset members are seated, but the current government continues functioning as the caretaker one, until the new one is formed.
Which brings up an interesting question to Jeremy – can you list the Knesset members that were only in Knesset for the few months and then were not elected again in these second elections?
Chag Sameach.
Netanyahu is PM as part of the caretaker government that took over when elections for the 21st Knesset were called. The caretaker government will stay in place until a new government is formed.
The 22nd Knesset will be seated on Thursday. It is their job to hold a confidence vote for the next government.
As I pointed out in the update above this is a process that could take days or months. I think most Israelis would like to see a government as soon as possible. Let’s hope that it what happens.
103 of the MKs today will return to their MK offices on Thursday when the 22nd Knesset is seated.
There are 8 new MKs.
There are 8 ex-MKs that were not elected to the 21st Knesset but were elected to previous Knessets.
There is even one MK (Stav Shafir) who was elected to the 21st Knesset and resigned in time to be elected to the 22nd Knesset.
Hi Jeremy. I remember you saying you would make a post to discuss the accuracy of your predictions. When is this post coming out? It seems to me like you strayed to far from your polling average, but I’d be interested to see your assessment.