Israel Vote: The Ballot Counting 19 Years of Netanyahu's Tenure

Israelis head to the polls Tuesday with the two opposing camps running dead even, according to surveys. The contest has consolidated into a single question: whether to return Benjamin Netanyahu, who has occupied the prime minister's office for 19 of the last 30 years, or hand power to a coalition that has spent years trying to remove him.

Netanyahu first won the post three decades ago. His durability rests on a base assembled over that period, which has held firm even amid reports that he received credible warnings of an attack and did not act on them. His allies circulate an account in which military and intelligence chiefs kept him uninformed, a claim the source article calls unfounded. He is also regarded as skilled at assembling coalitions, and many observers expect him to outmaneuver rivals during the negotiations that follow the vote.

The opposition bloc runs through Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff who entered politics four years ago and leads the Yashar party, a name meaning straight or direct. At a rally this week in Modi'in, he called for 'a country without lies' and proposed US-style term limits for the office 'because power corrupts.' Attendees framed his plain manner as the draw. Noa Sadeh, 56, said she is tired of people 'who know how to talk' and wants someone 'who will do the doing part.'

The opposition bench includes former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman, both figures of the nationalist right who once worked closely with Netanyahu before breaking with him. Yair Golan, who leads the Democrats and served as a general, said he is optimistic about the result. On the far right, Yishai Fleisher of Otzma Yehudit told voters in Bet Shemesh that Netanyahu tends to drift left and needs pulling back toward the right, arguing for more settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, a ministry to encourage the 'voluntary' departure of Palestinians, the death penalty, and more weapons for Jewish civilians.

Netanyahu has framed the closing argument. His latest posters set Yamin, the right, against Falastin, Palestine, placing opposition leaders beside the heads of two parties representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, who comprise roughly a fifth of the population. The final stretch has turned on whether Jewish parties predicted to outpoll his bloc but fall short of a Knesset majority would rely on mainly Arab parties. Pro-Netanyahu media, including Channel 14, have pressed that line. One exception came this week when Channel 14's Yinon Magal called Eisenkot a Moroccan 'monkey'; speakers at the Modi'in rally raised the slur, and Eisenkot did not.

The closeness of the polling puzzles observers given Netanyahu's record. The deadliest attack in Israel's history, the 7 October 2023 massacres at the Nova festival and southern kibbutzim, occurred under his watch. The war in Gaza has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, of whom Israel says a third were Hamas combatants, and Hamas remains in place. Iran's nuclear threat was not destroyed as promised. He also faces fallout from his attempt to curb the supreme court, the Qatargate affair involving his closest aides, and an ongoing corruption trial. Oded Levi, who voted for Netanyahu in 2022 but attended the Eisenkot rally, said whoever was prime minister then 'is responsible.'

Opposition hopes draw partly on voters abroad. Many liberal, secular expatriate Israelis are flying home to vote, a group pollsters do not capture and one that could matter if the result turns on a single one of the Knesset's 120 seats. On Thursday, a state ceremony marked the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin; Netanyahu stayed away and sent a low-ranking minister. A video shared widely this week showed scores of young Israelis at a Negev music festival singing Shir LaShalom, the song Rabin performed before he was shot 31 years ago.