Israelis began voting on Tuesday in the country's fourth parliamentary election in two years – a highly charged referendum on the divisive rule of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Public opinion polls forecast a tight race between those who support Israel's longest-serving premier and those who want "anyone but Bibi," as he is widely known.
Facing an electorate worn down by numerous campaigns and the coronavirus pandemic, candidates made their final push in recent days with a series of TV interviews and public appearances. The campaigns increasingly reached into people's personal space with a constant barrage of get-out-and-vote texts that made cell phones ding and buzz at all hours.
Netanyahu has portrayed himself as a global statesman uniquely qualified to lead the country through its many security and diplomatic challenges. He has made Israel's successful coronavirus-vaccination campaign the centerpiece of his reelection bid, and pointed to last year's diplomatic agreements with four Arab states.
Opponents accuse Netanyahu of bungling the management of the coronavirus pandemic for most of the past year. They say he failed to enforce lockdown restrictions on his ultra-Orthodox political allies, allowing the virus to spread, and point to the still-dire state of the economy and its double-digit unemployment rate. They also say Netanyahu is unfit to rule at a time when he is on trial for multiple corruption charges, a case he dismisses as a witch hunt.
Up to 15% of the electorate is expected to vote outside their home districts, a batch of absentee balloting that's larger than usual to accommodate those with coronavirus or in quarantine. The government is dispatching special polling stations, including vehicles, to provide places for them to vote safely.
Those votes are tallied separately in Jerusalem, meaning final results may not be known for days. Given the tight race, the large number of undecided voters and a number of small parties struggling to cross the 3.25% threshold for entry into parliament, it could be difficult to predict the outcome before the final count is complete.
Israelis vote for parties, not individual candidates. No single party list of candidates has been able to form a governing majority in Israel's 72-year history.
Some 20,000 police officers will be deployed to polling stations across the country and extra reinforcements will be placed at polling centers considered potential flashpoints, where cops will be on the lookout for quarantine violators and COVID-19 patients along with those looking to tamper with the vote.
At least 3,500 officers will be assigned body-cameras to record any suspicious behavior, while undercover units will be sent to a number of locations to protect ballots against voter fraud.
An estimated 400 polling stations are currently being labeled as "prone to trouble," where "unusual events" have been recorded in the past.
Senior Israel Police officials said that they do not anticipate riots similar to the events in Capitol Hill in Washington DC on January 6, nor do they have "any information on attempts to disrupt the election."
Regardless, "police are prepared for any scenario," they said.
"The police are doing everything to meet the most important goal – to allow every citizen to exercise their right on election day to go to the polls and vote safely."
Netanyahu's Likud party and those led by his rivals will be looking to smaller, allied parties as potential coalition partners. The party that can cobble together a majority coalition gets to form the next government – a process that is expected to take weeks.
Tuesday's election was triggered by the disintegration of an emergency government formed last May between Netanyahu and his chief rival, Benny Gantz, to manage the coronavirus pandemic. The alliance was plagued by infighting, and elections were triggered by the government's failure in December to agree on a budget.
Election surveys published in the final days before Tuesday's vote predict a tight race between the two major blocs: those who support Netanyahu as the next prime minister, and those against him.
For the first time in Israel's two-year political morass, Netanyahu faces stiff opposition from rival nationalist parties. Election polls project that his Likud party and its presumed allies may come up short of a 61-seat majority needed to form a governing coalition.
Polls forecast Yair Lapid's centrist Yesh Atid party will be the second-largest party, after Likud, but it remains unclear whether he and his allies will have enough to build a majority coalition.
Gideon Sa'ar's New Hope party, comprised of former Likud party politicians who seek to oust the prime minister, has positioned itself as a nationalist alternative to rule the country, unencumbered by the corruption trial and what he says is a cult of personality that characterizes Likud. After a strong start out the gate, polls suggest New Hope may not achieve its aspiration to stand on par with the Likud.
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Another former Netanyahu ally-turned-rival, Yamina Chairman Naftali Bennett, may become the kingmaker after the election results are in. He has not unequivocally ruled out joining a coalition with the embattled prime minister.
But if an anti-Netanyahu alliance has an edge, he could provide them with enough seats to form a government without the Likud party.
