JERUSALEM — Israelis from Tel Aviv and West Bank settlements, from Jerusalem and overseas, poured into polling booths Tuesday at the highest rate in decades for a pivotal election widely seen as a referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, and his record on the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
The election, the first since the Hamas attack, which killed about 1,200 people and ignited three years of regional war, has centered on Netanyahu’s stewardship of national security and the economy at a time when Israel remains locked in military conflicts in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran and faces heavy international criticism.
In the eyes of Netanyahu’s supporters — or “Bibi-ists” — the veteran statesman they call “Mr. Security” successfully seized half of Gaza, dramatically expanded West Bank settlements, decimated Hezbollah in Lebanon and coaxed President Donald Trump into going to war against Iran — all while offering a full-throated defense of Israel against accusations of war crimes and genocide.
But a growing number of critics say Netanyahu must be held accountable for the security lapses that failed to prevent Oct. 7, the worst attack in Israel’s history. They say that Netanyahu has diminished Israel’s global standing by joining hands with far-right religious nationalists who promote the violent seizure of land in the West Bank and sapped the country’s armed forces and fractured Israeli society by supporting ultra-Orthodox Jews who resist military service.
Many of those who seek change have rallied around the bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot, a centrist former military chief who, according to final polls this week, was running slightly ahead of Netanyahu.
Heading a sprawling bloc that ranges from Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister who once managed a West Bank settlement council, to Yair Golan, a retired general known for his dovish views toward Palestinians, Eisenkot has pledged to investigate Netanyahu over his response to Oct. 7, to force the ultra-Orthodox to enlist and to rein in violent settlers in the West Bank.
On Tuesday, the broad canvas of Israeli democracy was on open display as long queues of voters streamed out of ballot stations in schools and public buildings. As of 2 p.m., turnout was the highest since 1973, when Israel began tracking the statistic, Israel’s Central Elections Commission said. Political observers and party officials said that turnout was noticeably high among Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up a fifth of the population and overwhelmingly oppose Netanyahu’s coalition.
At the Tel Aviv airport’s arrivals hall, which has been packed in recent days by an estimated 70,000 Israelis returning to vote, Adva Sinai, 42, said dozens of her Israeli friends from Italy had already flown back. Sinai traveled just in time from Milan on Tuesday morning, she said, to vote — “and go out tonight to celebrate a change.”
What change? “Anyone but Bibi,” she said.
Change, however, is far from certain. The tight election contest and the complicated math of Israeli’s parliamentary system suggest that none of the major party blocs is positioned to win the 61 seats required to form a majority government. That means the ultimate outcome of the vote may not been known for weeks or even months after the polls close at 10 p.m. local time on Tuesday.
Near the airport in Lod’s Garden of Hope neighborhood, a stronghold for Netanyahu’s Likud party, Hana Dadon, a special-needs teacher who backs the prime minister, confessed that she “lives in fear” after the Oct. 7 attacks and interreligious riots in 2021 that rocked Lod, which has both Jewish and Muslim residents.
Pausing outside a polling place as other Netanyahu supporters launched into chants of “Only Bibi” and honked their car horns, Dadon, 59, said she believes that “not all Muslims are bad” and even hopes for eventual coexistence with Palestinians.
“I hope it will come, but for now, I still feel if I lift my head, they will cut it off,” she said. “There is only one country for Jews in the world. Israel has to be secure.”
Netanyahu has tapped heavily into that sense of peril as he touted his experience and security bona fides on the campaign trail. In television and online ads, he has repeatedly warned that Eisenkot would form a government with Palestinian Israelis and leftists, throwing Israel into chaos. He has slammed his rivals as soft on Iran and doubled down on his vow to “finish the job” of overthrowing the Islamic regime. On Sunday, he shocked many Israelis by posting an AI-generated image of Tel Aviv obliterated by an Iranian nuclear attack.
His opponents, meanwhile, have repeatedly warned that the prime minister might trigger a conflict with Iran to boost his electoral chances, amid media reports that the Israeli military brass was resisting pressure from Netanyahu to carry out strikes on the eve of the election.
On Monday, Avigdor Liberman, a former defense minister who leads a right-wing party aligned with Eisenkot’s bloc, demanded an investigation. In a letter to the attorney general, he said that dragging Israel into war out of fear of electoral defeat “constitutes treason.”
After high Palestinian Israeli voter turnout was reported early Tuesday, Netanyahu turned to a tactic that he has used in past elections: exhorting his base to come to the polls and counter the Arab tide. He posted a video warning that an Arab party was bribing voters and, by afternoon, shared a picture of women in hijab waiting outside a polling place in southern Israel.
“This is what’s happening today in Rahat,” he said in a post on X. “You must not stay at home. Get out and vote Likud immediately. We’re in a war for our home!”
In the West Bank, Elisha Yered, a prominent hilltop settler and activist who served as a parliamentary staffer in the Jewish Power party, led by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, posted a picture of himself casting a blue ballot and warned that the rise of an opposition coalition would mean obstacles for West Bank settlers.
“Go out and vote so that we may have the breathing room to continue our work with full force — to replicate, and with God’s help, even double, what has been achieved here over the past four years,” he wrote. “Believe me: a left-wing government will not only fail to stand by your side during crises or curb the system’s harassment — it will actively fight against you, with a knife between its teeth.”
In Jerusalem, two polling stations less than a mile apart but separated by Route 60 represented one of the chasms of Israeli politics — Palestinian citizens of Israel voting on one side of the road, ultra-Orthodox Jews on the other.
At a community center in Mea Shearim, one of Jerusalem’s largest ultra-Orthodox enclaves, voters lined up in family groups.
Nachman, a 45-year-old yeshiva student, said he came early to vote for the United Torah Judaism party at the instruction of his rabbi, Eliezer Berland.
Nachman’s vote could be significant — the UTJ has pressured Netanyahu to enact sweeping military draft exemptions for ultra-Orthodox men, and the party might be locked out of a potential Eisenkot-led government that demands universal conscription. Like other voters interviewed Tuesday, Nachman spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name to protect the confidentiality of his vote.
“I have no problem with Netanyahu,” Nachman said, adding, “I think Netanyahu has a problem with God.”
Across Route 60, at a school in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, several voters expressed fatalism about the election. A father and two adult sons said they feared that neither their votes, nor the final election results, would lead to any change in East Jerusalem, where they say police crackdowns have encroached on life for generations.
The father, Ali, and his sons said they all voted for the United Arab List, a mostly Palestinian Israeli party that could join Eisenkot’s bloc to form a parliamentary majority. The family said they did not dare to hope for the defeat of Netanyahu but were hoping for the departure of Ben Gvir, the far-right security minister in Netanyahu’s coalition, whom they blame for police oppression.
“You vote,” Ali said, “but you stop expecting anything to get better.”
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