The blocks on the ballot paper may carry familiar ideological labels, but the Israel election with Netanyahu at its centre is being fought along a different line. Voters and campaigners on both sides describe the contest as Bibi versus anti-Bibi, and the two camps spent the final days of the campaign making that case in living rooms, study halls and rally halls.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first took the job three decades ago and has held it, on and off, for 19 of the past 30 years. Across from him stands Gadi Eisenkot, the former general who is the lead opposition challenger in Tuesday's vote.

Bibi versus anti-Bibi

The framing came up repeatedly in conversations with voters: the two blocs in this election are not left and right but Bibi and anti-Bibi. The anti-Netanyahu camp stretches well beyond the traditional left.

It includes:

• •former prime minister Naftali Bennett
• •the Moldova-born Avigdor Lieberman, whose natural home is on the nationalist right

Both men once worked closely with Netanyahu before falling out with him.

The challenger at Modi'in

Eisenkot brought his campaign to an evening rally in the modest city of Modi'in, halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. He is a son of working-class Moroccan Jews who rose through the ranks to become IDF chief of staff and entered politics only four years ago. His party is called Yashar, meaning straight or direct.

His platform calls for a country without lies, responsibility, leading by example, and US-style term limits for the role of prime minister, "because power corrupts".

At the rally, supporters argued that what critics call a lack of charisma is precisely his strength. "I think that's an advantage," said Noa Sadeh, 56. "I'm fed up with people who know how to talk – like Bibi. We need someone who will do the doing part."

David Nadler, 74, a retired colonel who served under Eisenkot, insisted a journalist write down the word "integrity".

Among the crowd was Oded Levi, who voted Netanyahu in 2022 but attended the Modi'in rally. "Whoever was prime minister [then] is responsible. He has to go. For this reason alone, we need a change."

Warm-up speakers at the rally mentioned Channel 14's Yinon Magal characterising Eisenkot as a Moroccan "monkey" – a racial slur – in the campaign's final week, but Eisenkot himself did not.

The right holds its ground

On the other side, Yishai Fleisher of Itamar Ben-Gvir's Otzma Yehudit party addressed a group of about 30 orthodox voters in a study hall in Bet Shemesh on Thursday evening. His pitch for Netanyahu was practical: "He has a tendency to go left, so you have to pull him to the right."

Fleisher advocated more West Bank settlements, settling Gaza, a "ministry of emigration" that will encourage the "voluntary" departure of Palestinians, the death penalty, harsher treatment of Palestinian prisoners, and arming more Israeli civilians.

On the right, Ben-Gvir is a moon that is rising, but Netanyahu is still the sun. Netanyahu's poster campaign offers voters a rhyming choice of Yamin, meaning the right, or Falastin, meaning Palestine, and shows opposition leaders around two party heads representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about a fifth of the country's population.

A race that could turn on one seat

Polls show the pro- and anti-Netanyahu blocs neck and neck, with the anti-Netanyahu bloc currently forecast to do better than the Netanyahu bloc but to fall short of an overall majority in the Knesset.

The closing weeks of the campaign centred on whether the anti-Netanyahu bloc would make a parliamentary deal with mainly Arab parties – most of which have, historically, both refused to join Israeli governments and not been invited. Meanwhile, the chunk of the media that is loudly and vociferously pro-Netanyahu, most notably the Fox News wannabe Channel 14, has put opponents on the defensive.

A few details show how tight the contest is:

• •the Knesset has 120 seats, and the contest could turn on the fate of just one of them
• •expat Israelis, many liberal and secular, are flying home to vote on Tuesday

That is the state of play as polls open: two blocs divided by one man, a challenger pitching straightness over charisma, and a result that a single seat could decide.