Israel votes in first election since October 7 attack as Netanyahu faces crucial test

NEW: Israel votes in its first election since the October 7, 2023 attack, with Benjamin Netanyahu running neck and neck with centrist rival Gadi Eisenkot in a contest seen as the most consequential in the country's history.

Israel is voting today for the first time since October 7.

Benjamin Netanyahu, 77 years old and the country's longest serving prime minister, is fighting for his political life, and the last published polls had him dead level with his rival. You can see him here on the campaign trail in Jerusalem, running on his security record and his relationship with Donald Trump. His challenger is Gadi Eisenkot, a former military chief and a political novice, whose calm manner is being read as the direct opposite of the man he wants to replace.

The stakes are hard to overstate. Three years of wars on multiple fronts, Gaza in ruins, Israel increasingly isolated abroad, and 7.3 million eligible voters delivering a verdict on all of it. Tens of thousands have flown home just to cast a ballot.

Whichever way it falls, this vote decides what kind of country Israel becomes next.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.