Voting begins for Israeli parliamentary elections

The second Israeli parliamentary elections in five months are underway on Tuesday and will decide whether the nation's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could stay in power.

Posters of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump are seen ahead of the General elections in Jerusalem on September 16, 2019. [File photo: Anadolu Agency/ABACAPRESS.COM via IC]

Voting started at 7 a.m. local time (0400 GMT) Tuesday at 10,788 polling stations across the country and is due to end at 10 p.m. (1900 GMT).

There are about 6.4 million Israeli citizens eligible to vote in the elections, according to the Central Election Committee, which oversees the elections.

Vying for 120 seats in the one-chamber parliament, or Knesset, are 29 parties, after two parties withdrew from the race over the past week. Opinion polls predict that about ten of them will pass the electoral threshold and make it into the Knesset.

Recent opinion polls show a razor tight race between Netanyahu's Likud party with about 32 seats and his main contender, former military chief Benny Gantz's Blue and White centrist party with a similar number of seats.

The unprecedented elections were called by Netanyahu after he failed to form a ruling coalition following the April ballot.

The closely-fought elections will decide whether Netanyahu will make it to a record-breaking fifth term or end his decade-long dominance in Israeli politics.

Netanyahu is a suspect in several criminal corruption cases and might face indictment after the elections. Israel's Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has recommended pressing criminal charges against him in three separate cases, pending a long-awaited hearing.

Alon Cohen, 34, told Xinhua at a polling station in Tel Aviv on Tuesday morning that he voted for the Likud. "I had a lot of deliberations this time but I decided to vote for the man I always vote for -- Netanyahu."

"The economic situation in Israel is not good, housing is expensive, food is expensive, education is expensive," said Cohen, father of a baby girl struggling to make ends meet.

"Netanyahu has failed to deal with the high living cost problem, but I believe he is the only one who can take care of Israel's security," he added.