Polls opened across Israel on Tuesday for the country's parliamentary elections, the first national vote held since the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 and the war that followed in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran, Sky TG24 reports. Voting runs from 6am to 9pm Italian time to renew the Knesset, Israel's parliament, and determine the next government. More than seven million voters are eligible, and 36 parties are on the ballot.
Sky TG24 reports that a close contest is expected between the outgoing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his challenger Gadi Eisenkot. Only 13 of the 36 lists are tracked in opinion polls because they clear the 3.25 percent threshold required by electoral law to win a seat.
Why it matters
According to Sky TG24, this election decides more than the future of the Israeli state: it also bears on the balance of power across the Middle East. The vote is the first general election since the October 7 attack and the subsequent fighting, making it a referendum of sorts on the wartime leadership.
Turnout and the long count
By 10am local time, turnout stood at 16.68 percent, compared with 15.9 percent at the same point in the previous election in 2022, according to Sky TG24. Exit polls are due to be published as soon as polling stations close, but the official results will not be confirmed until eight days after the vote, on November 4. Sky TG24 explains that the delay comes from counting so-called double envelopes — ballots cast by people away from their home districts, including soldiers, diplomats and hospital patients.
Complaints of tampering and a cash investigation
Election day brought a series of disputes. Gadi Eisenkot's party, Yashar, filed an urgent complaint with the Central Elections Committee, alleging that its ballots were removed or damaged at polling stations around the country, Sky TG24 reports. The party said the volume of incidents raised a serious suspicion of a deliberate, systematic effort to sabotage the democratic process and to influence the outcome, adding that anyone trying to take ballots away was attempting to steal the election. The Arab-Israeli party Raam lodged a similar complaint, according to the same report.
Naftali Bennett's party, Together, accused Likud representatives of illegally tracking voters at polling stations and relaying information about them through an app, despite a Supreme Court ban, Sky TG24 reports. Citing Yedioth Ahronoth, it adds that Degel HaTorah, a faction within United Torah Judaism, instructed its election committee members to report turnout percentages throughout the day. Last week the High Court of Justice ruled that party representatives at polling stations may not use digital tools to relay real-time turnout figures, which the Central Elections Committee publishes officially four times during the day. Likud had argued that monitoring turnout serves two legitimate purposes: overseeing the voting and counting process, and encouraging people to vote.
The use of such apps had already been litigated before the election. Sky TG24 reports that in August, Supreme Court justice Noam Sohlberg, who chairs the Central Elections Committee, banned apps such as Elector on election day. The system is widely used by Likud and by other parties, including the ultra-Orthodox factions, the far-right Religious Zionism and Otzma Yehudit, and the opposition bloc's Yisrael Beiteinu. Other opposition parties, among them Yashar, Together and the Democrats, use a similar app called Victory, which shows only the number of voters and not their identities, according to the report.
In the Negev in southern Israel, police arrested three people overnight on suspicion of involvement in a plan to persuade voters to support Mansour Abbas's Raam party, Sky TG24 reports, citing the Times of Israel. Searches of the suspects' homes turned up envelopes containing tens of thousands of shekels in cash, according to the same account. Netanyahu described the episode as serious in a post on X on election day.
Who is Gadi Eisenkot
Sky TG24 describes Eisenkot, 66, as the main opposition candidate and, in the words of some commentators, a man who embodies everything Netanyahu is not. Most of his career was spent in uniform as a general; he has Moroccan roots, entered politics in 2022 and now leads Yashar, a name meaning "straight" or "honest" in Hebrew. According to Sky TG24, voters seeking an end to the Netanyahu era could rally behind him.
The source material also quotes a message attributed to Netanyahu addressed to "dear Itamar," asking how many times he would repeat "this bluff," telling him he would clear the threshold and be part of a strong right-wing government led by Netanyahu, and that they would keep working together for the State of Israel.
What to watch: the exit polls when polls close at 9pm Italian time, then the official count and the double-envelope tally that will not be finalized until November 4.
