Jerusalem: Israelis are voting on Tuesday in an election seen returning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to power with a rightwing coalition charged with tackling the key issues of peace talks and Iran’s nuclear drive.
After a slow start, the pace of voting picked up, with long queues outside several polling stations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
 Nine hours into the voting, turnout stood at 46.6 percent, said the Central Elections Committee.
 Polling ahead of the vote has consistently projected an easy win for the joint list fusing Netanyahu’s Likud with Avigdor Lieberman’s hardline nationalist Yisrael Beitenu, although they are only expected to win about 32 mandates, just over a quarter of the 120 seats in parliament.
The vote is likely to usher in a more rightwing government which will be less inclined to seek a peace deal with the Palestinians and could increase Israel’s diplomatic isolation.
“Likud-Beitenu represents all the people. The stronger Likud-Beitenu is, the easier it will be to lead Israel successfully,” said Netanyahu after voting in Jerusalem’s upscale Rehavia neighbourhood.
The new government will face key diplomatic and foreign policy questions, including how to handle Iran’s nuclear programme, which much of the world believes masks a weapons drive, and a Middle East profoundly changed by the Arab uprisings.
But domestic challenges will be no less pressing, with a major budget crisis and austerity cuts on the horizon, even as Israelis express widespread discontent over spiralling prices.
Opinion polls showed Likud-Beitenu winning between 32 and 35 seats, down from the 42 they currently hold but well above the 17 likely to be won by its closest contender, the centre-left Labour party.
Labour leader Shelly Yachimovich is expected to become the new opposition leader after pledging she would not join a Netanyahu government.
The campaign’s big surprise has been Naftali Bennett, the charismatic 40-year-old who is the new leader of the far-right national religious Jewish Home.
The party, which firmly opposes a Palestinian state and won just three seats in 2009, is on course to win 15, making it the third faction in parliament and a likely partner in any future coalition government.
 Bennett’s success has rattled Netanyahu, pundits say, with the 63-year-old premier pushing to stem the defection of voters to Jewish Home by burnishing his own credentials as a defender of Israeli settlements.
Among Jewish settlers, who make up about four percent of the electorate and tend to turn out en masse, there is a clear preference for Bennett and the extremist Otzma LeYisrael party, although some remain faithful to Likud.
“Between Likud, Bennett and Otzma LeYisrael, we have some very good candidates,” explained Daniel Hizmi, a teacher living in the hardline settler enclave inside the Palestinian city of Hebron, where residents are confident the new government will be strongly pro-settlement.
Election day is a public holiday in Israel, and in Tel Aviv thousands packed the beaches to enjoy a snap of unseasonably warm weather, but voting stations were also busy as people turned out to cast their ballots.
“People are looking for alternatives,” said Ohad, who voted for the leftwing Meretz.
 In Jerusalem’s trendy Germany Colony neighbourhood, a young teacher said she was voting for change.
 “We are so tired of Netanyahu,” the 32-year-old mother-of-three told AFP, saying she planned to vote for Bennett.
“He is strong, and he is religious but not extreme. Young families like us can relate to him.”
At the city’s Malcha mall, Nitza Salman, 49, said she was hoping for “change,” and would be voting for the secular centrist Yesh Atid party led by Yair Lapid.
“I’m voting for Lapid because I believe in him. If Netanyahu is prime minister, there needs to be people to block him, to calm him down.”
Polls suggest the rightwing-religious bloc will take between 61 and 67 seats, compared with 53 to 57 for the centre-left and Arab parties.
Gaza’s Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniya expressed fears held by many Palestinians, saying the vote would signal a “move from an extremist government to a more extreme government.”
Some 5.65 million Israelis are eligible to vote at 10,132 polling stations.
Voting ends at 2000 GMT, and exit polls will be broadcast immediately afterwards.
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