After the most traumatic four years in a rollercoaster country, which has taken citizens to underground shelters in Tel Aviv and soldiers to the top of Mount Hermon in Syria, 7,331,981 Israelis are voting today in the first elections since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. The participation rate has reached its highest level since 1981 at mid-morning, according to data from the electoral commission ("more than 1.2 million Israelis had voted, equivalent to a 16.68% turnout, declared the director of the Central Election Commission, Dean Livneh. This figure at this stage of the vote is unprecedented since the 17% reached in 1981).
The polls will determine whether Israel prolongs the era of Benjamin Netanyahu, extended to almost 20 years in three periods and governments of very different signs, whether it changes course under a leader with less experience but greater consensus, such as Gadi Eisenkot, or whether it enters into a blockade awaiting another round of elections in the spring. As uncertain as a new possible direct confrontation with Iran as tensions increase between Netanyahu and the head of the army, Eyal Zamir.
As in the five elections held since 2019, the blocs seeking to win 61 of the 120 seats in the Knesset were formed around Netanyahu. Likud, two ultra-orthodox parties and two other ultra-nationalist parties against two center parties leaning to the right, one on the right and one on the center-left. Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Liberman consider themselves more prepared than the rookie Eisenkot, but they affirm that they will do everything possible to end "the worst Government in the history of Israel." Netanyahu is dealing once again with a former chief of staff battled in a thousand battles, but none of them in the political arena. His great rival is not only Eisenkot, but the long shadow of the failure of 7-O, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and another 251 kidnapped, and a war with fronts still open.
The attack in southern Israel eroded the calling card that Netanyahu presents in each electoral campaign ("Security"), but did not destroy it in part due to the two unprecedented offensives against the Iranian regime and the blows dealt to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Netanyahu managed to avoid both the creation of the state investigative commission into the failure of 7-O and the early elections. In fact, the war and the adverse polls in 2024 and 2025 united the members of the coalition to avoid the polls ahead of time.
The question of the military exemption of the ultra-Orthodox - compounded by the need for thousands of soldiers to support or replace the reservists after three years of attrition - has appeared in the electoral campaign, although not with the force that the opposition would have liked. Eisenkot, Bennett, Yair Golán and Liberman, who see him as Netanyahu's Achilles heel due to his alliance with the two haredi parties, promise that their government will reward only those who do military service and work. A message that is applauded by a large part of the right-wing electorate, which, however, does not abandon Netanyahu's bloc so quickly when considering other criteria, such as the identity of the country (role of religion, the judicial system, etc.) and, above all, what remains the decisive element when voting in Israel: security.
In recent days, Netanyahu has encouraged the fear vote. If in his first elections, in 1996, he warned that "Peres will divide Jerusalem", he now composes phrases that rhyme in Hebrew and that, after 7-O, have more psychological force, such as "Right or Palestine" and warns with AI images that Iran will launch the atomic bomb against Tel Aviv if there is another prime minister in Jerusalem. This message, which the opposition describes as a "show of desperation and panic", has been reinforced by US President Donald Trump. He has asked Netanyahu for a vote, guaranteeing that together they will be able to complete the work before the ayatollah regime.
"We are talking about an existential issue," warns Netanyahu, who assures that the new Iranian leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, wants his defeat. Eisenkot promises firmness against Iran, ending Hamas, continuing cooperation with Trump, improving relations in the region and ending the damage to the country's image caused by ministers such as Itamar Ben Gvir or Bezalel Smotrich.
The latest polls from five media outlets give victory to Eisenkot, while two others give it to Netanyahu. None grants a majority to their blocks. All eyes are focused on participation. If the 70.6% in 2022 is exceeded, as predicted, in part thanks to the increase in voting intention in the Arab sector, more than 170,000 votes will be required (3.25% as a threshold) to be in the Knesset. Quite a challenge for the only party that represents the third block and for the new right-wing party of Ofer Winter.
