Israel general election: Netanyahu fights polls as country votes

VOTING has begun in Israel’s hotly-fought general election, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is battling the opinion polls.

Israeli MP and chairperson of centre-right Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid, takes a selfie with his wife Lihi (R) and his supporters, outside a polling station.

VOTING has begun in Israel’s hotly-fought general election, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is battling the opinion polls and fatigue with his right-wing government to vie for a fourth term.

The country’s 5.8 million voters are tipped to turn out in record numbers, with the final round of published opinion polls suggesting that Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party will finish second to the opposition Zionist Union in the popular vote.

But the real action takes place after the election in the horse-trading to cobble together a governing coalition with the array of minority and special interest parties that add spice and colour to Israeli politics.

If the polls turn out to be right and Likud ends up with only 20 or 22 seats of the 120 on offer in the Knesset, Mr Netanyahu will still be strongly positioned to do a deal with the political and religious Right.

His chief rival, Zionist Union and Labor party leader Isaac Herzog, has been buoyed by support from a joint ticket of parties representing so-called Israeli Arabs, banding together for the first time.

Israeli MP and chairperson of centre-right Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid, takes a selfie with his wife Lihi (R) and his supporters, outside a polling station.

In his final pitch to voters, the hawkish Mr Netanyahu renewed his warning that Israel’s security would be compromised by the centrist Zionist Union’s support for a two-state peace solution with the Palestinians. Hardening his position, Mr Netanyahu buried his past but reluctant endorsement of an independent Palestinian homeland, saying it would open Israel to terrorist attack.

Mr Herzog insisted Israel needed a fresh start and the Zionist Union would deliver cost of living relief.

Most Israelis take the day off to vote, which commenced at 7am in the spring chill. Ballot booths will stay open until 10pm, local time — 7am tomorrow AEST — when exit polls when provide the first glimpse of whether Mr Netanyahu’s 11th-hour media blitz and increasingly shrill

warnings about security could shift the momentum away from Mr Herzog’s team.

An Israeli woman casts her ballot with her child at a polling station in Jerusalem.

When he called the snap election last December, Mr Netanyahu, 65, a fixture on the political landscape of Israel for 25 years, was the hot favourite to be returned. But renewed controversy over his personal expenses and accusations that he had politicised Israel’s bedrock relations with the US in his March 3 address to Congress gave Mr Herzog an opening, which he exploited with a disciplined and clever campaign.