Netanyahu's political survival on the line as Israel votes

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a fight for political survival in Israel's election on Tuesday, with voters weighing his leadership after the 2023 Hamas-led attacks, wars in Gaza and Iran, and Israel's deepening international isolation.

Polls show close race between Netanyahu's Likud party and rival alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot

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· Posted: Oct 27, 2026 6:16 AM EDT | Last Updated: 15 minutes ago

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces a fight for political survival in Israel's election on Tuesday, with voters weighing his leadership after the 2023 Hamas-led attacks, wars in Gaza and with Iran, and Israel's deepening international isolation.

Yet Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving leader with 19 years in office, remains a formidable survivor, with nationalist politics increasingly entrenched and Israel's fragmented system potentially leaving him best placed to form a government.

Opinion polls show a close race between Netanyahu's Likud party and its right-wing allies and a rival alliance led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief of staff and security hawk with backers on the right and in the centre.

Voters began casting ballots after polling stations opened at 7 a.m. local time. The polls close at 10 p.m. Netanyahu has campaigned on his wartime leadership and his alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has endorsed him and joined Israel in waging war on Iran.

Netanyahu said on Sunday that Trump was prepared to act again to "finally" remove the Iranian threat — but only if Netanyahu remained in power.

• Analysis

  Netanyahu 'fighting for his political life' in 1st Israeli vote since Oct. 7. He might still survive

• Netanyahu faces fresh allegations he ignored warnings about Oct. 7 — right before an election

Eisenkot has accused Netanyahu of "relying on a campaign of fear-mongering, lies and threats," and said he was confident Trump would work "in full co-operation with any leader chosen by the people."

WATCH | Netanyahu's main challenger is Gadi Eisenkot:

Israel’s election seen as referendum on Netanyahu’s leadership

9 hours ago|

Duration

2:33

Israelis head to the polls on Tuesday in what’s being called one of the most consequential elections in the country’s history — largely seen as a referendum on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership and security policies during the last three years of war.

Netanyahu may again depend on far-right leaders Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich to form a government. Both have faced sanctions from some Western countries that accuse them of inciting violence against Palestinians, while Ben-Gvir's Jewish Power party has gained support in opinion polls.

Neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot has a clear path to power. If neither can form a governing coalition in the 120-seat parliament, Netanyahu could stay on as caretaker until another election is held next year.

The Israeli Central Election Committee said 7.3 million Israelis are eligible to vote, some 330,000 of them for the first time.

Hamas attacks loom over vote

The election follows one of Israel's most turbulent periods since its establishment in 1948, shaped by the trauma of the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel's subsequent military assault in Gaza and deep domestic divisions over the policies of Netanyahu's right-wing government.

Gadi Eisenkot is a former military chief of staff and security hawk with backers on the right and in the centre. (Ariel Schalit/The Associated Press)

For many of Netanyahu's opponents, the election turns on accountability for the security failures of Oct. 7, 2023, Israel's deadliest day.

Mali Hajaj, an Education Ministry employee and Eisenkot supporter, said "the most important thing is the establishment of a national inquiry because that's where our healing will come from."

Lisa Tortor said she hoped Netanyahu would go and "they can form a new government and do some of the repairing of the damage that Bibi has done for Jews all over the world and for Israel, and Israel's image." Bibi is Netanyahu's nickname.

But Nof Gabay, an 18-year-old Likud supporter, rejected the idea 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," Gabay said.

Israel flattened much of Gaza in the offensive launched after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli government tallies, and took another 251 hostage. Gaza health authorities say Israeli attacks since have killed 74,000 people.

The Israel-Hamas war has destroyed much of Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians continue to live in makeshift shelters and displacement camps. (Faiz Qreqa/Middle East Images/AFP/Getty Images)

Israel also dealt heavy blows to Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and traded strikes with Iran before a 12-day aerial campaign against Iranian nuclear sites in 2025 and this year's joint U.S.-Israeli war.

Eisenkot has said Israel's next government must prevent Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capability, either by force or through an "arrangement" such as a U.S.-backed diplomatic solution.

Eisenkot criticizes settler violence

Like nearly all Jewish-led parties in Israel, Eisenkot opposes the two-state solution that underpinned decades of peace negotiations with the Palestinians.

But he has criticized Jewish settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which has surged since 2023 and strained Israel's ties with Western states, and opposes Netanyahu's far-right coalition partners Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.

In some bastions of Likud support, disenchanted voters have been going door to door to turn voters against Netanyahu. Some have turned away from Netanyahu as he battles corruption charges he denies in a long-running criminal trial.

A man casts his ballot at a polling station in Haifa, Israel, on Tuesday. (Baz Ratner/The Associated Press)

A high turnout among voters from Israel's Arab minority — Israeli by citizenship but Palestinian by heritage — could help nudge Israel's complex coalition arithmetic in favour of Eisenkot.

Though Eisenkot has ruled out partnering with Arab parties, citing a lack of shared values, analysts see a scenario where they prop up a minority government he leads in order to ensure Netanyahu is removed from office.

"My expectation is that we will have only a slight majority either way. No landslide," said Israeli political analyst Amotz Asa-El of the Shalom Hartman Institute.