What to know about the Israeli elections as Netanyahu faces a battle for survival

TEL AVIV — After three years of navigating war, crisis and global outcry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing one of the most significant electoral tests of his decades-long political career.

As Israelis go to the polls on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s party is neck and neck with former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot, who has emerged as his strongest rival in a campaign that has revolved around everything from Israel’s security and military conscription to bread-and-butter issues like the economy.

Why is this election so important?

This is the first nationwide election in Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, the deadliest day in the country’s history.

The attacks, which saw 1,195 people killed and 251 taken into Gaza as hostages, triggered a major security crisis that led to three years of war on multiple fronts. There are few households in Israel that haven’t been affected in some way by the events that have played out since, leaving a sense of profound grief and insecurity that lingers across Israeli society.

For most Israelis, the man who has defined the continuing legacy of October 7 is Netanyahu. Many of his opponents believe he has repeatedly evaded responsibility for the intelligence failures leading up to the attacks and what is widely seen as the security forces’ inadequate response.

Bibi, as he’s commonly called, has led Israel for nearly 19 of the past 30 years, with security for many years a core part of his pitch to voters. The 77-year-old has survived political defeats before, only to come back stronger, but a groundswell of opposition could make this one of the most formidable challenges of his political career.

The election is about more than just political survival for Netanyahu — it’s also about his personal freedom. Netanyahu is seeking re-election while also facing long-running criminal cases domestically on charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, allegations he has dismissed as a politically motivated witch-hunt.

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His grip on power affords him political privileges that have allowed him to drag out those cases, but that could change if he is voted out of power. Critics have derisively accused him of running to stay out of jail.

What issues are at play?

Netanyahu goes into the election as both the leading candidate and one of the biggest issues dividing voters. His actions before, during and after the Oct. 7 attacks have driven much of the debate.

Netanyahu’s opponents — particularly his strongest rival, Eisenkot, 66 — have rallied around calls for an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the attacks, which Netanyahu has opposed.

Various critics accuse Netanyahu of helping to keep Hamas in power in Gaza in the years before Oct. 7, of prioritizing the fight against Hamas over rescuing Israeli hostages in the wake of the attacks, and of alienating Israel from much of the world with his actions since. Last month, he threatened to sue Israeli newspaper Haaretz over a report that he had been warned about Oct. 7 ahead of time.

“This is the first chance Israelis will have to vote in what is becoming a referendum on what Netanyahu has come to represent following Oct. 7,” said Dahlia Sheindlin, an Israeli American political analyst.

“For his supporters, he is the strong prime minister who fought back and was able to expand the war to other fronts to defend Israel,” she said. “And to his detractors or critics, people supporting parties of the opposition, he’s the prime minister who led to the failures of the government to detect or prevent Oct. 7 and has refused to take accountability for it.”

Netanyahu has staunchly defended his conduct and the war in Gaza, which has left about 74,500 people dead since Oct. 7, according to figures from the Palestinian Ministry of Health. He goes into the election facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and having vehemently rejected allegations of perpetrating a genocide from a United Nations commission.