"He does amazing things, and everybody around the world knows this," said bus driver Yehuda Pinkosov, 63, a Netanyahu voter from Modi'in. "The left is just looking for ways to hurt him and remove him."
While the election was the third in less than a year, the turnout was the highest in two decades, a surprise for many political observers who had predicted voters would stay away because of spiking coronavirus fears and electoral exhaustion.
More than 65 per cent of voters had cast ballots two hours before polls closed, besting levels going back to 1999.
Hundreds of voters who are in precautionary quarantine because of possible exposure to the coronavirus donned masks and gloves and came to 16 special biohazard voting places.
The final, furious days of the campaign — marked by a string of leaked insider recordings and ugly personal attacks — had showed signs of momentum for the Likud party of embattled Benjamin NetanyahuBut it was far from certain that any faction could gain the 61 parliamentary seats needed to form a government, which would herald another period of the party haggling that failed to produce a majority coalition in the two previous rounds. Israel bans polling over the final weekend before the vote, leaving the last-minute state of play uncertain.
The fears of infectious disease had been only the latest worry for an electorate anxious from nonstop politicking, adding hand washing to the hand wringing.
"I'm totally following it, and I'm totally frustrated," Jon Pollin, a Jerusalem-based tech executive who had voted twice before for the liberal Meretz party but may switch this time to the Blue and White party of Opposition leader Benny Gantz. "And I'm going to be even more frustrated when we're right back here for a fourth election."
In Modiin, a city of almost 93,000 halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, voters at Dorot Elementary School expressed a mix of fatigue, exasperation and growing uncertainty over the state of Israel's political system and how it is working for them.
"It's getting surreal," said Galia Meir, 42, who declined to say which party's ballot she had just dropped into the box. "This time, people are more confused and unsure about how to vote. Every time, clarity is going down and down. The longer this goes on, the more the slogans just make us lose trust in our leaders."
Meir, an attorney at the Ministry of Finance, has fretted to see the wheels of government grind to a near halt in the year of political limbo. "I've seen projects that were approved but are stalled without money from the budget," she said.
Razi Elbaz, a coder and part-time musician in a black Vans T-shirt, would say only that he had not voted for Likud. He also expressed fear of what the intractable division was starting to do to the country. The lack of government stability was one risk, he said, and deepening civic anger was another.
"I know people who vote for different parties than their family, and it causes real tension for them," he said, before heading off to join the throngs of Israelis crowding local parks, malls and cafes for the rest of the day off.
Pinkosov, the bus driver, had just voted without fear or confusion, casting his third ballot in a row for the religious Shas party that is part of Netanyahu's coalition.
"I killed two birds with one stone, voting for Shas and voting for Netanyahu to stay," Pinkosov said with pride as his wife and daughter nodded in agreement. None expressed any doubt about Netanyahu's integrity or commitment to Israel.
The country's fractious political system has been locked in an essential tie since the first election last April, when parties led by Netanyahu, Israel's longest-serving premier, and Gantz, a former army chief of staff, both failed to secure a majority of seats in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. A repeat vote in September produced the same stalemate following weeks of futile party negotiations.
Polls didn't suggest that much had changed in the run-up to the third. Gantz continued to vow he would never to form a unity government with Likud as long as it is led by Netanyahu, whose trial on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges is scheduled to begin two weeks after the election.
If neither party prevails again, attention will return to Avigdor Liberman, the hawkish former Defence Minister whose resignation from the Government a year ago helped spark the political uncertainty. Liberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, has refused to side with either Likud or Blue and White in previous negotiations, but he has also pledged to prevent the need for a fourth election.
Analysts were also be looking at the performance of Arab Israeli parties, who ran together again under the Joint List banner. The group won 13 seats in the September election, third most in the Knesset, when a surge of Arab voters helped deny Netanyahu a path to victory. Joint List members say their voters were even more motivated this round by the release of President Trump's peace plan, which outraged Palestinians with its tilt toward Israel.
The final stretch of the latest campaign had largely devolved into a mudbath. Political commentators noted Sunday that tactics had reached a new and dirty low even by Israel's rough-and-tumble standards, after voice recordings of political advisers that reflected badly on their candidates — one working with Netanyahu and one working with Gantz — were leaked to the press over the weekend.
