New Israel parliament to be sworn in as Eisenkot works to form new govt

Now Benjamin Netanyahu remains Israel's prime minister when the new parliament is taking office today but its new less friendly composition is set to make his life much more difficult. That is his opponent Gadi Eisenkot has been given a mandate by Israel's president to try to form a new government. It's a complicated task as neither he nor Netanyahu of course Command Majority. We're going to cross then live to Jerusalem, speak to our correspondent who joins us from there, Noga Tarnopolsky. Noga, a tough test for Netanyahu and his government from today, would you say? Absolutely. And they're still resisting this change, although the air does seem to have come out of the balloon of what appeared to be an attempted insurrection. For now, there are no signs of the mass rally that they called for to surround the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, and prevent the new parliament from being seated. And despite the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu's Likud party... And its allies have refused to move towards changing the party speaker to reflect the composition of the new Knesset. The newly appointed head of the opposition, Gadi Eisenkot, announced today who the opposition bloc's candidate is, the new majority bloc's candidate is. To replace the current one, this is Matan Kahana, an experienced legislator who is a member of Eisenkot's own party. So for now, the day and the swearing in of the new Knesset does appear to be proceeding apace. But one big question, in fact, revolves around the prime minister, who has not been seen Anywhere in public now for a full two weeks since Election Day, the night of October 27th. He's expected to show up at the Knesset. He was elected, re-elected to the Knesset. He's expected to give a speech tonight. But a bit of mystery does surround what's happened to him in the past two weeks. In the meantime, Noga, I mean, Eisenkot, is he getting anywhere with his coalition talks or is it just too early to say at the moment? It's probably too early to say. It's just been 36 hours since he officially received the nod, although it appears for now that he's giving a pretty wide berth to his most right-wing ally in this. His bloc, Avigdor Lieberman, who is trying to make headway with an ultra-Orthodox right-wing religious party that has abandoned the prime minister to see whether they could form some kind of coalition with them, but it's unclear whether these efforts will prosper. And also, for now, we don't know that much about other decisions among the bloc leaders or what direction they're aiming for. Noga, thanks so much. Noga Tarnopolsky joining us live there from Jerusalem.