Israeli voters began casting ballots Tuesday morning in parliamentary elections that will determine whether longtime Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains in office after a decade in power.
Israel imposed a closure over the West Bank preventing Palestinians from crossing the checkpoints.
Netanyahu cast his ballot in Jerusalem alongside his wife, Sara. He called on all Israelis to vote, calling it a "sacred act." Earlier on Tuesday he said that he wanted voters to back him because he was "on a historic national misison to build Israel, with an approach that is exactly the opposite of the Left's, with no concessions and withdrawals."
Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's main challenger, also cast his ballot, calling for a "new dawn" for the country.
Gantz voted early on Tuesday in his hometown of Rosh Haayin in central Israel alongside his wife, Revital. He called on all Israelis to get out and vote, saying they should "take responsibility" for their democracy.
Voting will "let us all wake up for a new dawn, a new history," he told reporters.
According to the Central Elections Committee, voter turnout stood at 12.9 percent at 10 a.m. slightly lower than in the 2015. Officials said it was too early to tell whether this indicated a general trend that would culminate with a lower overall turnout.
Party leaders made their final pitch to voters on Monday, less than 24 hours before voting began in more than 10,000 polling stations across Israel.
Netanyahu and Gantz both appealed to voters, asking for a clear mandate in the next Knesset to lead the country.
The prime minister toured Jerusalem's open-air Mahane Yehuda market, which is considered a Likud bastion, warning shopkeepers that the center-left bloc Blue and White was on the verge of toppling the Right.
Netanyahu, who has given a torrent of interviews to drive home this message, reiterated his claim that if Likud did not win the most seats in the Knesset, it would be denied the chance to form the next government because small right-wing parties would join a left-wing coalition.
Later Monday Netanyahu made a visit to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He also tweeted a picture of himself placing a note inside the cracks in the wall, as is customary. "With God's help, and with your help, we will win," he wrote in the tweet.
בעזרת השם ובעזרתכם - נעשה ונצליח! pic.twitter.com/spO8MDrUza
— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) April 8, 2019
Aliyah and Integration Minister Yoav Gallant, the head of the Likud's grass-roots organization, made several campaign stops, telling supporters that "every vote must go to Likud so that we become the largest party and ensure that Blue and White leaders Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid would not take power and take Israel backward; we must make our every effort, we can win."
Meanwhile, Gantz and the other top candidates in Blue and White took to social media to urge voters who were leaning Left to cast their ballot for the center-left bloc, noting that all they needed to get the presidential nod to form a government was a clear-cut advantage of five seats over Likud. Gantz and former Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, who is placed fourth on the Blue and White candidate list, also gave several interviews.
