Exit polls published by the three main Israeli television channels showed that Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc was set to secure between 61 and 62 seats, the minimum required to form a ruling coalition. The current government is helmed by centrist caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid, leader of the Yesh Atid party, which was projected to get between 54 and 55 seats.
The far right bloc that has joined Netanyahu’s coalition, known as Religious Zionism, were predicted to win between 14-15 seats — an unprecedented showing for a movement once considered too extreme for the political mainstream.
The predominantly Arab and left-leaning slate, Hadash-Taal, a possible kingmaker, was projected to take home four seats. It is still unclear if another Arab party, Balad, will cross the four seat electoral threshold.
It will likely be days before a clear picture emerges.
In the last election, in 2021, Netanyahu was similarly projected to win a majority that would allow him to cobble together a coalition, but he ultimately fell short. The final count for Tuesday’s contest will not be published until Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.
Since 2019, Israel’s political system has been marred by gridlock. Neither Netanyahu nor his opponents have come close to finishing a four-year-term. The latest election came after the collapse of the “change government” — a coalition of ideologically disparate parties united solely by the desire to oust Netanyahu — after just one year in office, following a cascade of defections by coalition members.
Netanyahu’s plans to return as prime minister could give him more legal leverage in his ongoing corruption trial. He has falsely claimed that the trial is a “witch hunt” orchestrated by the Israeli left.
Amid reports of high turnout Tuesday, Netanyahu filmed an “emergency broadcast” with his entourage while on his way to an event in the southern city of Ashkelon, warning of a “large arrival of voters in left-wing bastions.”
He answered questions from followers, one of whom complained of voter exhaustion after five rounds of elections.
“We’re at a 60-60 tie right now. Can we afford exhaustion?” Netanyahu said. “If you don’t go vote, then you’ll see exhaustion.”
Lapid, Netanyahu’s centrist opponent, voted near his home in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning.
“These elections are between the future and the past,” Lapid tweeted.
If Netanyahu is tapped to form a government, he still faces the daunting challenge of trying to cobble together a parliamentary majority in the Knesset at a time of unprecedented division.
His strategy has been to embrace the far right, led by Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir. The once-fringe politicians became marquee attractions this campaign season, bashing the courts and advocating for the expulsion of “disloyal” Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel.
Flipping hot dogs at an election day barbecue in the West Bank settlement of Efrat, Gadi Rivkin, 36, a father of four originally from Milwaukee, said he voted for Ben Gvir to protect Israel’s Jewish character.
“The demographics do matter here,” he said. “I want someone in the Knesset who represents my interests, someone who wants the state to be a strong Jewish state.”
Ben Gvir is “king! He kills terrorists!” said Shmuel Nemirovski, 30, getting onto a motorbike bearing a Ben Gvir campaign sticker outside a polling site in Ma’alot Dafna, an Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem.
Omer Attias, 23, a law and art history student who lives in Tel Aviv, called the Ben Gvir phenomenon “disturbing.”
She voted for the left-wing Labor Party, part of the anti-Netanyahu coalition, and said she hoped a new government could bring changes for her generation: the introduction of public transportation on Saturdays, which has long been blocked by ultra-Orthodox parties; and laws that would further enshrine women’s rights, including access to abortion.
The procedure is available to virtually all women in Israel, but the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the United States has spurred a legislative revision here that eases access but has also caused a minor right-wing backlash.
“The years under Netanyahu were not all bad, but we now need to ensure we can protect Israel’s liberal values,” Attias said.
The polls, which have remained virtually unchanged over the past four months, indicated that the pro-Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu blocs were neck and neck.
“Even though I’m tired, I know that I need to vote because I don’t want the fanatics to get into power,” said Eden Ronen, 27, who decided to vote Lapid only at the polling station, near her childhood home in the central Israeli city of Rishon LeZion.
“People like Ben Gvir were once disqualified from politics, and suddenly now, it’s like, sababa, cool. But they could have so much power, and I don’t want them to use that power against me, to take the whole country backward,” she said.
The small parties will be just as critical to the ultimate outcome as the larger ones. Any of the three politically unaffiliated Palestinian parties could play a decisive role. The same goes for the ultra-Orthodox parties, which, unlike in past elections, have not pledged to support Netanyahu. After a year out of the government, the parties are under pressure to find support for their underfunded schools and institutions.
“Bibi Netanyahu is not giving us what we’re supposed to get,” said Nachum Rosenberg, using Netanyahu’s nickname.
Rosenberg grew up in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem where, he said, his school suffered a lack of funding. He now lives in Brooklyn but extended a visit to Israel for the Jewish holidays so he could vote. His rabbi here instructed him to vote for the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism.
“My rabbi is watching that Israel is going in a certain way,” he said — namely, toward a more secular lifestyle in which establishments and public services are open on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath. “If you don’t pay attention, you will lose your specificities.”
Israeli security forces were on high alert Tuesday, with more than 18,000 officers deployed at polling stations across the country. The army is enforcing a full closure of the occupied West Bank, warning of terrorist attacks.
A spate of Palestinian attacks this year has resulted in an Israeli crackdown on the West Bank, particularly around the northern city of Jenin. Escalating Israeli raids have put 2022 on track to be the deadliest year for Palestinians since the United Nations began recording such data in 2005.
Palestinian Israeli Kamel Jabarin, 37, said he was concerned by the implications of Israel’s rightward shift on Palestinians’ rights and of the prospect of a third intifada, or mass uprising.
“Us Palestinians, we are hit again and again, in an increasingly powerful manner,” Jabarin said.
He traveled Tuesday to a polling station in Sheikh Jarrah, in East Jerusalem, from his home in the Shuafat refugee camp — where more than 100,000 Palestinians, many of them descendants of those who fled or were forced from their homes during the 1948 war, are mostly neglected by Israeli and Palestinian authorities alike.
Garbage collection, water lines, sewage systems and other basic infrastructure is minimal. Unemployment is high and violence is rising.
Jabarin, who obtained Israeli citizenship in 2014, decided on his vote at the last moment. He voted for Ra’am, the Arab Islamist party — the first-ever Arab party to be included in a governing coalition in Israel — “because it’s a party based in reality, that will support services for Palestinian society.”
But this election campaign, like many in the past, has only peripherally addressed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. With just two weeks of campaigning amid general political fatigue, parties instead focused on fortifying their base and encouraging people to get out to vote.
In front of a polling station in Jerusalem, Eric Binisti, 51, a hospital clown, said he hopes for a Netanyahu victory, “because I love Israel, I love the security of Israel. I love all the people, Arab and Jewish.”
“But it’s the same as before,” he said, referring to the seemingly endless election cycle. “Today, we have who? Bibi? Lapid? They are like my profession — clowns!”
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