Voting starts in Israeli election

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Israelis went to the polls on Tuesday for a parliamentary election expected to return prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to office for a third term with his Likud Beiteinu bloc holding a smaller number of seats.

Polling stations opened at 7am under unusually warm weather for Israel’s nearly 5.7m eligible voters, who have until 10pm to cast their vote.

Israeli electoral officials said the voter turnout at noon was 27 per cent, higher than the 23 per cent recorded at the same time of day in the last election in 2009. Voter turnout was also higher than in previous elections among Israeli Arabs, who as a group turn out to vote in smaller numbers than Jewish Israelis.

Exit polls projecting the election’s result are due to be published after 10pm, and votes counted overnight and on Wednesday. With no party projected to win a majority, the make-up of Israel’s next coalition government will be decided in days or weeks of coalition talks that Mr Netanyahu is expected to lead.

Opinion polls suggest that Likud Beiteinu will win the vote comfortably, but its lead has narrowed in recent days.

The last set of polls before Tuesday’s vote, published on Friday, showed that the bloc – a merger of Mr Netanyahu’s Likud and former foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu – will win about 32 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, 10 fewer than it has now.

Mr Netanyahu went to Jerusalem’s Western Wall after voting at a polling station in a school, and said: “I pray today for the future of Israel, for the sake of our people, I believe in this and I am certain that Israel’s citizens will do all within their power to give strength to the people of Israel in its land and its country.”

Mr Lieberman, who resigned his post in December to fight criminal charges of fraud and breach of trust, voted in the Jewish settlement of Nokdim in the occupied West Bank.

Naftali Bennett, leader of the far-right nationalist Jewish Home party which has taken some of Mr Netanyahu’s support, voted in Ra’anana, near Tel Aviv, and said: “I hope that Israel will give Naftali the chance to do something good here.”

The leftwing Labour party is projected to gain about 18 seats, making it the second-largest party. Polls suggest that rightwing parties will have a small numerical edge over centre-left ones in the next Knesset, but analysts say Mr Netanyahu will probably face tortuous talks if he wishes to form a coalition, and may need to accommodate both rightist and centrist coalition partners’ demands.

The campaign, in which 32 parties fielded candidates, highlighted the growing fragmentation in Israeli politics and a hardening of political views on the right, epitomised by the rise of Jewish Home, which has proposed annexing more than half of the West Bank.

Hagit and Benny Zaken, a Jerusalem couple aged 31 and 34 who cast their votes on Tuesday morning, said they voted for Jewish Home.

“We both voted for Naftali Bennett, and we hope he will be good to his promise,” said Ms Zaken, who works in the Israeli state comptroller’s office, as her husband held their small son in his arms. “We are coming from a religious family; he is also is religious and speaks about the importance of family values.”

Mr Netanyahu called the election last year ahead of schedule after his government failed to pass a budget. In a country that ousts prime ministers in elections more often than it re-elects them, a third term in office would put the 63-year-old on track to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister since David Ben-Gurion, the Jewish state’s founding father.

Likud campaigned on slogans of “strength” that played on Israelis’ anxieties over regional security after the Arab uprising, and his government’s record of maintaining economic growth during the financial crisis.

Labour sought to rally voters around discontent with growing social inequality in Israel. Shelly Yachimovich, the party’s leader, has in recent days urged Israelis to turn out for the ballot, amid projections that 15 to 20 per cent of voters are undecided.

Yael Gamon, a 47-year-old Israeli who works in philanthropy who voted in Jerusalem, said she opted for Ms Yachimovich’s party. “I voted for Labour because for me the most important thing now are social justice issues, and their values are most close to mine on social justice in Israel.”

Israel’s unresolved conflict with the Palestinians barely figured in Likud’s or any other parties’ campaign debates or platforms.