Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fighting for his political life, scrambled to bring out his base on Tuesday as Israelis voted in record numbers in the country’s first election since the Oct 7, 2023 attack.
With Israeli Arabs voters turning out in strong numbers, Netanyahu raised fears that leaders of the minority group were out to “steal the election” and reverse the hardline Jewish nationalist direction in which his government has taken the country.
The first exit polls showed the opposition bloc with a slight edge over Netanyahu’s camp as voting ended, but still shy of an outright majority in the 120-seat Knesset.
The country’s main pollsters — Channels 11, 12 and 13 — projected the opposition bloc to win 52 or 53 seats, and Netanyahu’s bloc to win 50, although his Likud would be the largest single party in the parliament, with 24 or 25 seats.
Netanyahu’s Likud Party also unsuccessfully asked election authorities to keep polls open past 10pm (1am PKT), as the opposition charged that he was looking for pretexts to challenge the results.
“We cannot leave this battle here in the hands of the left and the Arab parties that want to bring an end to the Jewish state,” a visibly tense Netanyahu told supporters as he tried to bring up turnout in a Likud stronghold.
“So no barbecues, don’t go to the beach — go to the polling station and vote Likud,” he said.
Nationwide turnout as of 6:00pm was 66.7 per cent, the highest at that point in the day since such statistics were first recorded in 1973, the Central Elections Committee said.
Israelis are casting their ballots in the shadow of Oct 7 and the multi-front regional wars that it sparked, with the trauma from the attack still fresh and questions over accountability and security central to the campaign.
The close-fought vote comes as Israel looks increasingly isolated on the world stage, driven by the war in Iran and the devastating military campaign in Gaza, soaring settlement construction and violence in the occupied West Bank.
In the years since Oct 7, 2023, Netanyahu led multiple wars that have seen Israeli forces reduce Gaza to rubble, occupy southern Lebanon and pummel Iran with US help.
The last opinion polls to be published showed Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, running neck and neck with his main rival Gadi Eisenkot, a political novice and former military chief.
Eisenkot has vowed to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state and expressed support for Israeli settlements, but has promised to crack down on violent settlers.
Before voting, the 66-year-old Eisenkot paid his respects privately at the grave of his son Gal, whose death fighting in Gaza has drawn empathy from many Israelis.
Speaking afterwards at a polling station, Eisenkot called on Israelis to vote to replace “the worst government since the state was established”.
Arab minority in spotlight
Some 7.3 million people are eligible to vote, with tens of thousands of Israelis estimated to have flown in from abroad for an election seen as crucial to deciding the future character of their country.
Eilana Zisblit, 55, told AFP she had travelled back from Canada, where she has lived for almost 30 years, to vote for a centre-right party in Eisenkot’s bloc.
“The country is going in a really, really bad direction. Both for Jews and Arabs living in the country, and for Jews living abroad,” she said.
The time to act is “now, or the country really won’t survive anymore”.
Turnout appeared to be unusually high among Israeli Arabs and in east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu, 77, has served as prime minister on and off for more than 19 years.
Throughout his career, he has repeatedly raised the spectre of Arab voters as a threat.
He warned on Tuesday of Arabs voting by the busload, writing on social media that Israel could wake up to a “government of the left wing and Muslim Brotherhood”.
Netanyahu said that three senior officials of the United Arab List had been arrested with envelopes full of cash in the south.
The acting director general of the Central Elections Committee, Dean Livne, said that police had “caught individuals who tried to bribe voters”, adding that the unidentified suspects were not at polling stations and were caught near their homes.
He said the matter was a localised case and under investigation.
United Arab List head Mansour Abbas, who could emerge as a kingmaker in a close election, accused Netanyahu of “lying and inciting” to mobilise his voters.
In Tel Aviv, left-wing party The Democrats, which is part of Eisenkot’s opposition bloc, said police had arrested a man with a knife who had moved threateningly towards its leader Yair Golan.
“Incitement and violence will not intimidate us,” Golan said in a statement, blaming the incident on the “poison machine” of Netanyahu.
Trump endorsement
Netanyahu returned to power in December 2022, bringing into his coalition far-right ultra-nationalists who have since seen their political clout skyrocket.
Seeking to unseat the premier is an informal bloc of parties led by Eisenkot’s Yashar party and spanning from the right to the centre-left — including former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid, as well as seasoned politician Avigdor Lieberman and left-leaning Golan.
The Arab minority accounts for some 21pc of the population, but Eisenkot has been coy on whether he would ally with their lawmakers to wrest power from Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has cast himself as the only person who can keep Israel safe.
In the last days of the campaign, he posted an image of a nuclear bomb destroying Tel Aviv and talked up his endorsement by US President Donald Trump, who is also fond of alleging election fraud.
