Elections: Israel Votes as Netanyahu Faces Eisenkot Test
Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday, voting for a new Knesset in the first general election since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed. Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. local time, with more than 7.3 million eligible voters. The contest pits Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader, against a challenge led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, whose new centrist party has led the prime minister’s Likud in most recent polling. Yet the final surveys agreed that neither side looks likely to win the 61 seats needed to govern alone, so the harder question of who forms the next government will fall to days or weeks of coalition bargaining.
The vote is the first since the last general election in 2022. More than 30 party lists are competing for the 120 seats in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and between 11 and 13 of them are expected to clear the 3.25 percent electoral threshold. Seats are allocated by proportional representation, so no single party has ever won a majority on its own.
Elections: Who Is Running and What the Polls Say
The central duel is between Netanyahu’s Likud and Yashar, the new party led by Eisenkot. On one side stands the governing coalition led by Likud and joined by several far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties. On the other stands an opposition made up of four Jewish-led movements, Yashar, the Democrats, the Yisrael Beiteinu party, and the Together alliance, alongside the Arab-led parties whose support could prove decisive after the votes are counted.
The final surveys put Yashar narrowly ahead of Likud. The last polls before a polling blackout that took effect on Friday projected Eisenkot’s party winning between 22 and 24 seats, with Likud on between 21 and 23. The latest Channel 12 poll put Eisenkot first with 23 seats against 21 for Likud, though on the pro-Netanyahu Channel 14, Likud was projected to take 30 seats and Yashar about 20. In head-to-head matchups asking voters who is better suited to be prime minister, Eisenkot has led Netanyahu by a steady margin in recent polling.
Behind the two frontrunners, the Together alliance led by former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid was projected to win 13 to 14 seats, the Democrats led by Yair Golan eight to nine, and the Joint List of three Arab-led parties nine to 10. Yisrael Beiteinu, led by former defense minister Avigdor Liberman, and United Torah Judaism were each projected at eight seats, while Shas and Otzma Yehudit, the party of far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, were projected at seven to eight each.
Those numbers explain why the question of who is leading in the polls right now matters less than the question of who can reach 61. Most polls put Netanyahu’s bloc, made up of Likud, the two far-right parties led by Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, and the two ultra-Orthodox parties, at between 49 and 55 seats, short of a majority. The opposition is deeply fragmented, and neither Bennett nor Liberman has endorsed Eisenkot. Even a clear win for Yashar as the largest party would not by itself deliver the premiership.
Election Polls: Security, Accountability, and the 61-Seat Problem
The campaign has been fought above all on security and accountability. Pre-election opinion polls suggested that security is the main concern of more than a third of the Israeli electorate, and the opposition has made the October 7 attacks the center of its case. Eisenkot, who served as the military’s chief of staff from 2015 to 2019, has demanded a state commission of inquiry into the failings that preceded the attacks, and he has argued that Netanyahu is dangerous for Israel’s security. Shortly before the stations opened, he posted on social media telling voters to remember the hour of the attacks when they went to vote. “Today we have an opportunity to put a slip in the ballot box, to replace the government of October 7th and the shirking, and to set Israel on a new and better path,” he wrote. He later voted in the southern city of Ashdod.
Eisenkot’s personal story has been central to his appeal. The 66-year-old entered politics in 2022 with former defense minister Benny Gantz’s National Unity alliance and later joined the war cabinet Netanyahu assembled after the October 7 attacks. His son Gal, 25, and a nephew were killed in December 2023, and another nephew in November 2024, losses that have shaped his public standing. In June 2024, he quit the war cabinet alongside Gantz, accusing Netanyahu of lacking a strategy to end the war. A year later, he founded Yashar, advocating for professional government, military service for all, and the commission of inquiry into the October 7 failings.
Netanyahu, by contrast, has campaigned as the strongman who led the country through war, warning voters against an opposition-led government. At 19 years in office across his terms, he is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. His party’s messaging has leaned heavily on his alliance with President Donald Trump, who has endorsed him. The prime minister also continues to face domestic legal proceedings and an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2024 over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The smaller parties on the right will shape any coalition. Smotrich cast his ballot on Tuesday morning and told voters that the country could not gamble with its security, saying his camp would continue bolstering security and settlement plans. Ben-Gvir voted in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba and declared that the right-wing coalition would prevail. “We shall win,” he said, warning that an opposition victory would result in a government led by Mansour Abbas, chairman of the Israeli-Palestinian Ra’am party. Likud also planned to deploy teams to film Palestinian citizens of Israel outside polling stations, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Palestinian citizens of Israel make up about one-fifth of the population, and their parties could be critical to the post-election arithmetic.
Voter Turnout: A Country Votes for the First Time Since October 7
The stakes extend well beyond the coalition arithmetic, because it is the first time Israelis have voted since the attacks that killed more than a thousand people on October 7, 2023, and the war in Gaza that followed, in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry. The campaign has been shaped by disputes over ultra-Orthodox exemptions from military service. Israel’s international standing has also deteriorated during the current government’s tenure, with a host of its allies sanctioning its settlements in the occupied West Bank.
President Isaac Herzog, who has served as president since 2021, cast his vote with his wife Michal on Tuesday morning. His role becomes central once the results are known: under Israel’s system the president consults the party leaders and tasks one of them, usually the leader best placed to assemble a majority, with forming a government, a process that can take days, weeks, or even months.
The opposition leaders used the morning to make their closing appeals. Liberman said he was putting an end to the Netanyahu era, Bennett told voters the moment was theirs, and Eisenkot said the day’s victory would be for the next generation. Their argument: the government in office on October 7 should not be the government that leads the country afterward. For many voters, the choice is about which leader they trust. Netanyahu’s supporters cite his long record and the campaigns against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. His critics cite the October 7 failure, the war’s costs, and the damage to Israel’s standing abroad.
Trump Netanyahu News: The American Shadow Over the Race
The election is also being watched closely in Washington, where the result will shape the next phase of the United States’ closest partnership in the Middle East. Netanyahu has campaigned openly on his alliance with President Trump, who has endorsed him and joined Israel in waging war on Iran, and the prime minister’s supporters present the relationship as a guarantee of American backing in the conflicts ahead. The American president’s endorsement is a measure of how closely the two leaders’ political fortunes have become entwined.
That closeness has not gone unchallenged. Eisenkot has been critical of the government’s reliance on the United States, arguing against such heavy dependence on decisions made in Washington. The debate is unlikely to be settled by the election, whichever side wins, because the alliance itself is supported across almost the whole of the Israeli political spectrum.
Election Results: What Happens After the Polls Close
Attention turns tonight to the question of what time the election results come out. Polling stations close at 10 p.m. local time, and the television networks are expected to publish their exit polls at that hour, offering the first preliminary projections of the result. They will give the first indication of whether Yashar or Likud has finished first, and whether either bloc is within reach of a majority. The official results will be finalised in the coming days, once the full count, including the votes of soldiers and diplomats, has been completed.
The two Arab-led parties could prove decisive in the days that follow. Ra’am, led by Mansour Abbas, made history in 2021 by becoming the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition, as part of the broad alliance that briefly removed Netanyahu from power. Abbas could again be a kingmaker if the main opposition bloc agrees to rely on his lawmakers to remove Netanyahu. The Joint List, meanwhile, refuses to join a government but has said it could provide the safety net described above, a position that would allow an opposition coalition to govern without Arab ministers, provided its conditions are met.
The path to a government will not be straightforward for either side. If Netanyahu’s bloc falls short of 61, as the polls suggest, he will need to persuade parties outside his bloc to support him. If the opposition wins the most seats but cannot unite behind a single candidate for prime minister, the president’s consultations could stretch on. Failure could even mean yet another election; Israelis have lived through five in less than four years.
For now, the focus is on the count. The vote is widely billed as the most consequential in Israel’s history, and the first in which voters can pass judgment on the leaders in office on October 7, 2023. The polls suggest the country is divided almost exactly down the middle, and the result is likely to be decided by the margins: by turnout, by the smaller parties hovering near the threshold, and by the negotiations that begin the moment the exit polls are published.
Source: The New York Times