For the first time since Hamas's October 7 attack, Israelis are heading to the ballot box, and it's being billed as a straight-up referendum on Benjamin Netanyahu himself.

So, Israel is voting today, and it's tense.

As reported by cbinews.tv, this is a deeply divided country going to the polls for the first time since October 7, 2023. The trauma is still raw, and the ballot is essentially asking: do you stick with Bibi, or is it time for change?

Let's get into the numbers. Some 7.3 million Israelis are eligible to vote, including hundreds of thousands of first-time voters who, interestingly, skew heavily centre-right to right-wing. Tens of thousands have even flown back into the country just to vote.

On one side you have Benjamin Netanyahu, 77, Israel's longest-serving PM with over 19 years in office on and off. He's running hard on security, his bond with US President Donald Trump, leading wars in Gaza, Lebanon and even strikes on Iran since October 7.

On the other, Gadi Eisenkot, 66, the former army chief turned political novice. Calm, centrist, and seen as Netanyahu's polar opposite. The latest polls had them neck-and-neck.

And the human stories tell you everything:

In Jerusalem, 65-year-old Alexandra told AFP: “I want change... I want a good democratic centrist government.”

But 85-year-old Zipporah Bennett said she's backing Netanyahu “because he has had the experience of navigating the country through difficult seasons.”

This isn't just about who is PM. Israel is more isolated internationally than it has been in years, over the war in Gaza, settlement expansion in the West Bank, and a sharp drift towards hard-right religious nationalism. This vote decides what kind of country Israel wants to be next.

Israel has 120 seats in the Knesset. You need 61 to govern. No one ever gets that alone. So it's all about coalition maths. The Arab lists, representing about 21% of the population, could end up as kingmakers, though neither Netanyahu nor Eisenkot has said they'd work with them.

And there are big divides that won't go away whatever the result, such as the ultra-Orthodox draft exemption and whether to hold a full state inquiry into the October 7 security failures, which Eisenkot wants and Netanyahu's government has resisted.

Polls close at 10 pm tonight [2000 GMT]. Final results could take days, and building a coalition? That could take weeks, even months. If talks collapse, we could be back at the ballot box again; Israel has formed here.

One voter, Uriel Brandler, 58, summed it up perfectly to cbinews.TV: “This is one of the most important election days in the history of the state of Israel.”

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