Israelis vote Tuesday in a general election that could end Benjamin Netanyahu's record run as prime minister, with polls showing the race deadlocked between his Likud-led bloc and a challenge from a former army chief whose son was killed fighting in Gaza.

The vote for all 120 seats in the Knesset was triggered when the outgoing parliament, Israel's first since 1988 to serve a full four-year term without early dissolution, voted in July to dissolve itself. It is the first national election since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack and the two years of war that followed. Pre-election surveys reported by the Times of Israel and other Israeli outlets have shown neither Netanyahu's governing coalition nor the opposition bloc led by Gadi Eisenkot's new Yashar party reaching the 61 seats needed for a majority, with recent polling putting the premier's allies in the high 40s to low 50s.

Eisenkot, 66, is a retired lieutenant general and former IDF chief of staff who quit Netanyahu's wartime cabinet in 2024, arguing the government lacked a strategy for Gaza. His 25-year-old son was killed in combat there, and he lost two nephews to the war as well, according to reporting on the race. He is campaigning on a promise of a state commission of inquiry into the security failures preceding the October 7 attack, mandatory military service for ultra-Orthodox men, and investment in rebuilding communities hit by the war.

"This time it's on us," Eisenkot told supporters at his campaign launch.

A deepfake ad and a disputed Iran strike

The campaign's final stretch has been dominated by two controversies. Likud drew bipartisan condemnation after releasing an AI-generated video that showed a young man many viewers said resembled Eisenkot's late son running toward Eisenkot before the image swerved into an embrace with Arab-Israeli party leader Mansour Abbas. According to i24NEWS, former Likud minister Limor Livnat and former military spokesman Avi Benayahu both publicly rebuked the ad, and Likud quietly swapped the young man for a different figure in a revised version after the backlash. Netanyahu's team has denied any intended resemblance to the dead soldier.

Separately, Israel's Channel 12 reported that Netanyahu pressed President Trump in recent days to authorize renewed strikes on Iran before Tuesday's vote and before the U.S. midterm elections on November 3, citing what he described as Iranian steps toward rebuilding its nuclear and missile programs. The Prime Minister's Office denied Netanyahu sought a war before the election, and a U.S. official said Trump has told Netanyahu he can "prepare" but made no commitment, adding Washington will not strike Iran before the midterms. Israeli military and intelligence officials have said assessments of Iran's capability have not changed in a way that would justify an operation in the coming weeks, per the Times of Israel's reporting, and Israel's military chief has reportedly warned that renewed fighting could force postponement of the vote itself.

Netanyahu, who remains on trial on corruption charges, has cast the election as a stark choice between right and left. He has argued that had Israel followed Eisenkot's approach during the war, Hamas would still control Gaza in full.

Polls open Tuesday across Israel. Because no bloc is projected to reach a majority on its own, President Isaac Herzog will have to decide which party leader gets the first chance to try to assemble a governing coalition, a process that could take weeks and may again hinge on smaller ultra-Orthodox and Arab-led parties clearing the 3.25% electoral threshold. Whoever ultimately governs will inherit decisions on Gaza reconstruction, the fragile Iran standoff and a long-promised accounting of the October 7 failures.