Netanyahu's Rivals Unite as Israel Weighs a Third Decade of His Rule

Israeli voters go to the polls Tuesday with the country split almost evenly between those who want Benjamin Netanyahu to keep the prime minister's job and those who want him out. Polls show the two camps running close. Netanyahu first took the office three decades ago and has held it for 19 of the past 30 years.

The opposition campaign is led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff who entered politics four years ago and heads a party called Yashar. At a rally this week in Modi'in, he called for term limits for prime ministers, arguing that power corrupts. His party name means straight or direct. Attendees said they prefer his direct manner to polished speakers. Noa Sadeh, 56, said she wants someone who will do the doing part.

The anti-Netanyahu bloc also includes former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Avigdor Lieberman, both nationalists who once worked with Netanyahu before breaking with him. On the far right, Yishai Fleisher of Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party told voters in Bet Shemesh that Netanyahu drifts left and needs pulling to the right. He called for more settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, a ministry for the voluntary departure of Palestinians, the death penalty and more weapons for Jewish civilians.

Netanyahu has framed the campaign around a choice he set. Posters offer a rhyming pick between Yamin, the right, and Falastin, Palestine, placing opposition leaders beside party heads representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about a fifth of the population. The closing weeks turned on whether anti-Netanyahu Jewish parties, forecast to outpoll his bloc but fall short of a Knesset majority, would rely on mainly Arab parties. Channel 14, a pro-Netanyahu outlet, has kept his opponents on the defensive. One exception came this week when its presenter Yinon Magal called Eisenkot a Moroccan "monkey." Speakers at the Modi'in rally raised the slur; Eisenkot did not.

Netanyahu's record has drawn scrutiny. The 7 October 2023 massacres at the Nova festival and southern kibbutzim, the deadliest attack in Israel's history, occurred on his watch. The war in Gaza has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, a third of whom Israel says were Hamas combatants, and Hamas remains in place. Iran's nuclear threat was not destroyed. He also faces fallout from his attempt to curb the supreme court, the Qatargate affair involving aides, and an ongoing corruption trial. Oded Levi, who voted for Netanyahu in 2022 but attended the Eisenkot rally, said whoever was prime minister then "is responsible."

His durability rests on a base built over three decades, unshaken by reports that he received credible warnings of an attack and did not act. Allies promote an account in which army and intelligence chiefs kept him in the dark; that claim is unfounded. Many expect him to build a coalition after the vote. Opposition hopes rest partly on liberal, secular expatriates flying home to vote, a group pollsters do not track and one that could matter if the result turns on a single one of the Knesset's 120 seats.

On Thursday, a state ceremony marked the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. Netanyahu stayed away and sent a low-ranking minister. Yair Golan, leader of the Democrats and a former general, said he is optimistic and wants opposition leaders to agree on a regional strategic process for long-term security. A video shared widely this week showed scores of young Israelis at a Negev music festival singing Shir LaShalom, the song Rabin sang before he was shot 31 years ago.

Polls close Tuesday. Both sides are within reach of a Knesset majority, and neither leader has conceded ground.