Where does Israel stand ahead of its ‘most consequential election’ ever?

Israelis go to the polls today. It’s their first general election since the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023 led to war in Gaza. With opinion polls suggesting that Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition is “neck and neck” with the main opposition bloc, this is a nation “deeply divided and ready for a fight”, said the BBC. Most Israelis see this election as “the most consequential in their country’s history”, said The Guardian.

For Israelis in Netanyahu’s electoral strongholds, the prime minister is their “champion and protector against enemies across the region” and against a loathed “domestic ‘elite’ they perceive as undermining the will of the people” by succumbing to “international pressure to allow a Palestinian state”, said Neri Zilber in the Financial Times.

Elsewhere, the atmosphere is very different. On Saturday, thousands rallied in Tel Aviv to protest against Netanyahu’s government and call for an independent inquiry into the security failures that led to the 7 October Hamas attacks. “Taking part were leading figures from opposition parties, including Gadi Eisenkot,” said Al Jazeera. The Yashar party leader, and Netanyahu’s main centre-right rival, “was greeted by chants of ‘Who’s coming? The next prime minister’”.

Division has also arrived by air. As most Israelis living abroad are not allowed to vote by post, “expatriates need to cross oceans to cast their ballots”, said The Telegraph. Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics estimates the number of citizens living abroad at 600,000, so the expat vote has the “potential to tip the scale”. There’s much talk “about the thousands coming home, determined to remove Netanyahu”, said Jonathan Sacerdoti in The Spectator, “but thousands also are coming to keep him in office”.

The young will be a crucial voting demographic. More than 500,000 Israelis have reached voting age since the last election in 2022. This generation “came of age after the Oslo process collapsed” and were teenagers when the October 7 attacks occurred, said The Guardian. “Bucking global trends,” they “are more right-wing than older generations”.

The first exit polls will be published at 10pm local time (8pm in the UK) but neither Netanyahu’s bloc nor Eisenkot’s are projected to win the 61 seats needed to form a majority government. There’s likely to be weeks or months of political wrangling before any workable coalition government can be formed.

The “critical balance of power” will almost certainly be held by the two Arab-majority groupings, said the BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Yolande Knell. Most of the other parties, including Eisenkot’s Yashar, have so far said they would not work with Arab parties, because of “a lack of shared values”. The Arab groupings are open to alliances but they have their own policy aims, not least a solution to “rampant gang crime”. In this high-stakes election, it’s “Arab citizens could yet decide who wields power in Israel, and they see this vote as key to their own future in the country”.