JERUSALEM _ For the second time in five months, Israelis went to the polls Tuesday for a national election that pits the country's longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, against a former military chief, Benny Gantz.
In unprecedented do-over balloting, Netanyahu, 69, is fighting not only for his political career but potentially for his freedom, with likely criminal charges hanging over his head that he may be able to forestall, but only if he wins.
Pre-race polls showed an extremely tight contest between Netanyahu's conservative Likud Party and Gantz's more center-right Blue and White. Neither is expected to win anything close to a majority in Israel's 120-seat parliament, or Knesset _ just as neither did in an April election.
Netanyahu narrowly won that vote, but couldn't manage to cobble together a governing coalition and was forced to dissolve parliament, setting the stage for Tuesday's redo _ the first time in Israel's history it is holding two national elections in a year.
That has led to a degree of voter fatigue, which could depress turnout.
If he wins, Netanyahu _ who has been prime minister for the last decade and also served for several years during the 1990s _ will again face difficult arithmetic in trying to assemble a coalition. A complicating factor for the prime minister is Avigdor Lieberman, Netanyahu's former defense minister and political frenemy, may be poised to assume a kingmaking role, particularly if his party, Yisrael Beiteinu _ Israel Is Our Home _ picks up more seats.
Lieberman, whose party is secular, refused to enter into a coalition with Netanyahu unless the prime minister agreed to have ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminarians serve in the Israeli military. Their exemptions are a sore point with many secular Israelis.
Coalition politicking will be the key thing to watch after the vote. It's even possible that Netanyahu and Gantz, despite their differences, would agree to join forces in a "unity" government. Or there could be another stalemate, which could conceivably lead to yet another national vote, probably early next year.
Netanyahu has been shadowed by separate but intertwined long-running scandals, and the attorney general has recommended criminal charges in three of them. He faces accusations of accepting expensive gifts for political favors, ordering government action aimed at hurting a newspaper in exchange for favorable coverage from a competitor, and helping a friend receive regulatory concessions for his telecommunications company.
With an indictment expected pending an October hearing, some hard-line and ultra-religious potential coalition partners are willing to support measures that would grant Netanyahu immunity from prosecution while in office. But that would all but rule out an alliance with the secular Lieberman.
Netanyahu denies all the charges against him.
In the days and weeks leading up to the election, the prime minister stayed with his usual political playbook and took steps to appeal to Israel's far right. Last week he pledged to annex the Jordan Valley, which makes up a large part of the West Bank.
Seizing so much Palestinian territory would probably be a death knell for the so-called two-state solution, which calls for Israel and a Palestinian state to exist side by side.
But for many Israeli voters, bread-and-butter domestic issues are far more important.
Netanyahu, as in the past, has also been criticized for harsh anti-Arab rhetoric leading up to the vote, which might galvanize the Israeli citizens of Palestinian descent who make up about a fifth of the electorate. This time around, an inflammatory message on his Facebook page _ railing against "Arabs who want to destroy us all" _ led to a determination that it violated Facebook's hate-speech policies. The prime minister blamed a staffer and took the post down.
Like his ally President Donald Trump, Netanyahu has targeted the news media in the election run-up, and has also launched stinging personal attacks on political foes, as well as law enforcement and the judiciary.
He has sought to depict himself as a master statesman, continually touting his warm relationship with Trump but also reaching out to leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he met last week.
Prior to the April vote, Trump moved to bolster Netanyahu's prospects, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967. But some hard-line Israelis were dismayed by Trump's recent firing of John Bolton, the hawkish national security advisor whose views on Iran aligned closely with Netanyahu's.
Another potential complication is the long-delayed peace plan being put together by Trump's son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner. If Netanyahu triumphs and is able to form a hard-right government, he would have a difficult time getting his allies to make any concessions to the Palestinians, which could torpedo the plan. But Gantz has expressed more willingness to negotiate with the Palestinians.
(Special correspondent Tarnopolsky reported from Jerusalem and Times staff writer King from Washington.)
