Israelis began voting in an election on Tuesday that could hand conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a record fifth term or see him dethroned by an ex-general who has pledged clean government and social cohesion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. across the country \nand will close at 10 p.m. But the victor may not be decided immediately.\n No party has ever won an outright majority in the 120-seat parliament, \nmeaning days or even weeks of coalition negotiations will lie ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dubbed\n “King Bibi” by both Time and Economist magazines, Netanyahu has rallied\n a rightist camp hardened against the Palestinians and played up Israeli\n foreign policy boons that are the fruit of his ties with the Trump \nadministration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the 69-year-old Likud party leader’s hope of \novertaking Israel’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, as \nlongest-serving premier in July has been dented by a looming graft \nindictment. He denies any wrongdoing.Critics warn of “Bibi fatigue” and \nargue that the parliamentary election should bring fresh faces to high \noffice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stalking Netanyahu in the opinion polls has been Benny \nGantz, a former chief of the armed forces and centrist political novice.\n Buttressed by two other former generals at the top of his Blue and \nWhite party, Gantz, 59, has sought to push back against Netanyahu’s \nself-styled image as unrivalled in national security.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israelis began voting in an election on Tuesday that could hand conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a record fifth term or see him dethroned by an ex-general who has pledged clean government and social cohesion. Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. across the country and will close at 10 p.m. But the victor may not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":58768,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58769,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58767\/revisions\/58769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}