Israel PM Elections: For the fifth time since 2019, Israelis are voting in the national elections, hoping to break the political deadlock that has paralysed the country for the past three years. Voting in Israel began at 7am (050:0 GMT) and will continue until 10pm.
The foremost issue in the Tuesday vote once again is former leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his fitness to serve amid corruption charges on him.
The lone left-wing voter in a right-wing Jerusalem area
Inside the polling station in the Katamonim neighbourhood in West Jerusalem, Uriel Abulof, 48, chuckled and said to his father, “I think I’m the only person voting left here.”
He voted for the liberal Zionist left-wing Meretz party.
“I would like to see our state democratic and Jewish – Jewish in the sense of being a homeland for the Jewish people, a place where Jewish culture can thrive,” he said. “At the same time, I’d like to see Israel as a democratic state, a liberal one.”
Israel’s controversial nation-state law defines Israel as being the nation-state of Jewish people, in what human rights organisations have criticised as a law that enshrines Jewish supremacy over Palestinian citizens.
It was that political view and his interest in what motivated his family to be right-wing that led him to his profession, an assistant professor of political science at Cornell University in the United States.
“I am from a very right-wing family. And if I cannot understand my family, how can I understand my people and their politics?” he asked.