By Lena Marchetti
JERUSALEM — Israelis vote Tuesday in a parliamentary election that will decide whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s longest-serving leader, keeps power after three years of war. His main challenger is a former army chief who argues that the country needs a reckoning over Oct. 7.
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. local time (1 a.m. to 4 p.m. Eastern), Reuters reported via Al-Monitor. Exit polls are expected after voting ends, though a final count and the coalition talks that follow could take much longer.
Opinion polls show a close race between Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party and its right-wing allies and an alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces whose Yashar party draws support from both the right and the center.
Two pitches
Mr. Netanyahu is running on his wartime leadership and his close relationship with President Donald Trump. On Sunday, Reuters reported, he said Mr. Trump was prepared to act again to “finally” remove the Iranian threat, but only if he stayed in office.
Mr. Eisenkot has accused the prime minister of “relying on a campaign of fear-mongering, lies and threats,” according to Reuters. He has said he is confident Mr. Trump would work “in full cooperation with any leader chosen by the people.”
Mr. Eisenkot has said the next government must stop Iran from gaining a military nuclear capability, either by force or through an “arrangement” such as a U.S.-backed diplomatic deal. He opposes a two-state solution, as nearly all Jewish-led parties do, but he has criticized settler violence in the West Bank and rejects Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right partners, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich.
Trump weighs in
Mr. Trump has openly backed the prime minister. In an endorsement posted on Truth Social and reposted Sunday, he wrote: “Please let this Letter serve to represent my Complete and Total Endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu in his upcoming Race for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Israel.”
The endorsement went further. “If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” Mr. Trump wrote, referring to the confrontation with Iran.
In a message to Israeli voters on Sunday, the president added: “When you go to the Polls please remember that Bibi has been an outstanding Warrior Prime Minister!” He closed with, “Vote for Bibi Netanyahu for Prime Minister, we have to finish the job that we started!”
What voters said
For many of Mr. Netanyahu’s opponents, the vote is about accountability for the security failures of Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Mali Hajaj, an Education Ministry employee who supports Mr. Eisenkot, told Reuters that “the most important thing is the establishment of a national inquiry because that’s where our healing will come from.”
Supporters of the prime minister see it differently. Nof Gabay, an 18-year-old Likud supporter, rejected the idea that Mr. Netanyahu was to blame for Oct. 7 and called him “the right man for the state of Israel.”
“Netanyahu managed the war in the best possible way,” the young voter said.
The numbers
A final Maariv poll published Oct. 23 by The Jerusalem Post gave the opposition bloc 54 of the Knesset’s 120 seats and Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition 48, with the rest going to Arab parties. Mr. Eisenkot’s Yashar led all parties with 21 seats. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s B’Yachad party rose to 15.
The same poll found that 81 percent of Israelis said they were certain to vote, compared with 71 percent turnout in 2022. Sixty percent said they would prefer a unity government to another election if the result is inconclusive.
Neither leader has a clear path to a majority. Mr. Eisenkot has ruled out partnering with Arab parties, but analysts see a scenario in which they support a minority government he leads from outside, Reuters reported. If no coalition forms, Mr. Netanyahu could stay on as caretaker until another election next year.
“My expectation is that we will have only a slight majority either way. No landslide,” Amotz Asa-El, a political analyst at the Shalom Hartman Institute, told Reuters.
Mr. Netanyahu, who has served 19 years as prime minister, is also on trial on corruption charges, which he denies.
Asked to elaborate on the president’s statement that America “will have to do this work ourselves” if Israel has “the wrong Leader,” the White House press office referred The Buffalo Chronicle to the president’s Truth Social post.
Updated October 27, 2026: This story was updated to include a response from the White House press office.
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