Nearly six million Israelis head to the polls today to elect 120 members of the Knesset (Israel's parliament) amid a dead heat between the incumbent Likud party and the Zionist Union alliance.
Israel's official electoral commission said the number of eligible voters for the 20th Knesset vote stood at 5,881,696, who cast their ballots at 10,372 polling stations nationwide. The official election results will be announced Thursday by the electoral commission. The polling stations opened at 7 am and the voting last until 10pm. As the Israeli law suggests, the Election Day is an official day for all Israelis.
Twenty-six lists will compete in today's election, but opinion polls indicate that only 11 of these will likely exceed the 3.25-percent electoral threshold. Israel's first Knesset elections were held in 1949. The last were held in early 2013 and saw voter turnout of 67 percent. The Knesset elections are held every four years, but the assembly can dissolve itself before the expiration of its term through a simple majority vote.
Competition between the right-wing party Likud and the Zionist Union alliance is expected to be fierce, recent polls indicate. Likud is headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while the Zionist Union is an alliance between the centrist Labor and Hatnuah parties led by the opposition leader Isaac Herzog and former Justice Minister Tzipi Livni respectively. The poll results indicating a decline in support for Netanyahu reflect criticism coming from his voter base for his though stance in international issues at the expense of providing solutions for the domestic socio-economic problems of Israelis. Israeli voters blame Netanyahu for focusing on Iran's nuclear threat and other regional issues while neglecting the economic needs of Israelis. In February, Israel's state comptroller issued a report on the rapid rise in house prices
Amid growing international pressure on Israel for the two-state solution to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party has long been rejecting to take the international community's call to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The rightwing incumbent Netanyahu has repeatedly accused his center-left challengers Herzog and Livni of being ready to abandon Israel's claim to Jerusalem as its indivisible capital in peace negotiations with the Palestinians. "The important thing is to keep a unified Jerusalem," he told Channel 2 news on the final day of campaigning for Tuesday's election. Over the past two years, Netanyahu repeatedly defied international condemnation, including from Washington, to expand Jewish settlement neighborhoods of the city, something that he accused his challengers of opposing.
Studies show that the Israeli settlement policy undermines the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, employs excessive use of force by the Israeli forces on Palestinians, the humanitarian impact of the military blockade on Gaza flared up more tension and hatred between Israelis and Palestinians, leading the region to a point of no return to peace as peace efforts are already stuck.
