The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has asked his followers to go vote en masse this Tuesday afternoon in view of the very high participation that is recorded in the localities where Palestinians with Israeli nationality live, and has suggested that the Arab parties "are stealing" the legislative elections. In addition, the president has requested the Electoral Committee to extend the voting hours without specifying the reasons. Participation in Israel reached its historical maximum at 4:00 p.m. with 56%: more than 3.2 million citizens have already cast their ballot in the first parliamentary elections after the attacks of October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 Israelis died and 251 were kidnapped. Likud, Netanyahu's party, aspires to repeat the government formula alongside the religious supremacist right and ultra-Orthodox parties. Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot has called on Israelis to go vote to bring about the change the country needs. “There is a wind of change in Israel,” he assured.
The Likud, the party led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced the presentation of a request to the Central Electoral Commission to extend voting hours beyond 10:00 p.m., when most polling stations close. The formation, which has been making all kinds of calls to its members to mobilize during the day, does not specify the reasons.
One of its coalition partners, the ultra-Orthodox Shas, has joined the request. The argument is made on the importance of “avoiding a situation in which citizens waiting in line cannot exercise their right to vote” given the historic electoral participation. The director of the Central Electoral Commission, Dean Livne, has been open to extending the hours if there were still people in line to vote at 10:00 p.m.
The leader of Yashar!, Gadi Eisenkot, asked Israelis this Tuesday to go out and vote. "Change is in danger," said the main opponent of Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israeli elections, who has insisted to Israelis through X that they "go out and vote": "Talk to everyone you know. Now."
With four hours to go until the polls close in Israel, participation is so far at 55.7%, a record figure, according to the Central Electoral Commission, which has been carrying out these counts since 1973 and had not recorded such a high percentage until now. In total, 7.3 million Israelis can vote today to renew the 120 seats in Parliament, the Knesset. It is the first time that Israelis go to the polls after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023 and the elections have become a kind of plebiscite for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has marked Israeli political life in the last 20 years.
“Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood are attacking polling stations and stealing the elections,” the head of government said in a message on his social networks. "If we don't go out to vote now, we will find ourselves with a government of Arab parties. Staying at home is prohibited! Every vote counts!" he added.
The messages show the nervousness of the head of government, who, according to the polls, will not be able to remain in office because he will not be able to forge alliances that will allow him to have the majority of deputies: 61 out of 120. Along the same lines, the Israeli Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, has admitted, after having access to the voting data of the Arab parties, that "they have reached an unprecedented level" and that the consequences for the right could be "dramatic."
The independent legal center Adalah denounced this Tuesday significant delays, shortages or lack of electoral ballots in Arabic in different localities with Palestinian populations in Israel, during the holding of the parliamentary elections. “Since this morning, the Adalah organization has received numerous reports from voters in Arab localities related to the slowdown or closure of voting centers,” this NGO that defends the rights of the Palestinian minority in Israel detailed in a statement.
A record number of votes (estimated at about 650,000 out of a census of 7.3 million) will be cast by a special system here called “double envelope.” It is the one used by soldiers, diplomats, hospitalized people, medical personnel, prisoners, people with disabilities and people displaced from their homes... And this year there are more than ever due to the large number of soldiers deployed in places like Gaza or southern Lebanon and Syria, and because thousands of people displaced by three years of conflict have not yet returned to their homes.
The Israeli Police arrested this Tuesday a man who approached with a hidden knife Yair Golan, leader of the center-left opposition party The Democrats, who attributed the event to the “direct result of the poisonous machinery operated by [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his Qatari agents.”
More than half a million settlers residing in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will be able to vote in Israeli legislative elections. At the same time, Israel has decreed a closure of the West Bank since last Friday, when a Palestinian attack was carried out in which two Israeli soldiers and the two attackers, from the city of Hebron, died.
