Israel Votes in Election Seen as Referendum on Netanyahu
Seven Lights
Israeli voters went to the polls on Tuesday in the country’s first general election since the Hamas-led attacks of October 7, 2023, a contest widely described as the most consequential in Israel’s history and a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stewardship.
Most polling shows Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition will lose its majority in the 120-seat Knesset. The opposition bloc, a fractious alliance spanning the center left to the right, is also expected to fall short of the 61 seats needed to form a government, leaving coalition arithmetic the central question after the count.
The vote could end the almost two-decade stretch of right-wing rule under Mr. Netanyahu, 76, who has led the most far-right government in Israeli history. His main challenger is Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces who leads the Yesh Atid party. Mr. Eisenkot has framed the election as a question of Israel’s identity as a liberal and tolerant democracy. Mr. Netanyahu has made security the center of his campaign, warning that electing his rivals would risk making Israel less safe.
The stakes for Mr. Netanyahu are political and personal. He stands trial on corruption charges in three separate cases, despite interventions by President Donald Trump, who called for a pre-emptive pardon and wrote to Israeli President Isaac Herzog on the prime minister’s behalf. The cases are ongoing.
The election follows three years of war and regional conflict. Hamas militants broke out of Gaza on October 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Israel’s subsequent campaign in Gaza has killed at least 75,000 people, a toll deemed genocide by a United Nations commission of inquiry and by rights groups, and has left Israel increasingly isolated among many of its traditional allies. A war with Iran this year fed a global energy crisis and killed thousands of people, mainly in Lebanon and Iran.
Settlement expansion has been a key feature of Mr. Netanyahu’s re-election campaign, even as deadly extremist settler violence in the occupied West Bank has surged and allies have announced plans to sanction “settler terrorists.”
Polling stations were scheduled to close Tuesday evening, with exit polls and early results expected overnight. Coalition negotiations are likely to decide whether Mr. Netanyahu’s long tenure ends or is renewed.