TEL AVIV — Israel seems stuck.

Benny Gantz, the former army chief whose party narrowly defeated that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is trying to form a government and drive Mr. Netanyahu from office for the first time in a decade. The prime minister, clinging to power, hopes Mr. Gantz will fail, forcing a third election that few in Israel want .

Nothing important can get done until the country resolves the question of who will lead it. And weighty decisions about Israel’s future await — on national security, with rockets from Gaza landing in the South and tensions with Hezbollah cranking up in the North; on how religious the Jewish state should be and who should be exempt from serving in its army; and on how to address other problems, including teeming hospitals, overcrowded classrooms and gridlocked highways.

But in some ways, Israel also seems stuck in the past.

On Saturday, around 25,000 people flocked to a central plaza facing Tel Aviv City Hall to remember Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister who sought to make peace with the Palestinians and who was assassinated by a Jewish extremist who believed he was justly executing a traitor.