TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — For two decades since leaving Israel for Canada, Yael Natra said, she didn’t consider returning to vote in her home country’s elections. She felt it wasn’t right to cast a ballot in a place she no longer lived.
But now, after seeing the far right gain power, Natra, 61, said she believed she had no choice.
Ahead of Israel’s election on Tuesday — the first since the 2023 Hamas-led attacks and ensuing wars in the region — Natra spent thousands of dollars to travel nearly 6,000 miles from Toronto to Tel Aviv to be in the country and vote, she said.
Israeli law generally requires citizens to vote in person in the country, with narrow exceptions for diplomats and certain official emissaries abroad. Natra said she plans to cast her ballot for parties not aligned with the current government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The Israel that I grew up in is disappearing,” she said in an interview from Toronto, citing an eroding democracy and deeply divided society. “If something won’t change this time, I don’t know what’s going to be.”
Tens of thousands of Israelis living abroad are expected to fly in for this month’s vote, according to AID Coalition, a U.S.-based nonprofit focused on strengthening Israel’s democracy. The election is one of the most consequential in Israel in years, widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s handling of the wars and the hard-right turn Israel has taken both domestically and on the world stage.
Israel has more than 7.3 million registered voters, but polling suggests a tight race. Previous elections have turned on thin margins. It’s unclear what effect these voters might have, but many liberal Israelis who don’t support Netanyahu have left the country in recent years, suggesting that those returning to cast ballots would not support him.
“Many Israelis who have left over the years — and especially since Oct. 7 — are exposed to the isolation and animosity toward the country much more palpably than those inside, and as such are likely to want to vote out Netanyahu,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit think tank.
The US tops the list of voters traveling to Israel, one group’s estimates show
AID Coalition estimates that as many as 67,000 voters are returning to Israel, based on surveys of expatriates and registration data gathered for its “Fly&Vote” initiative. It says about half are flying in from the United States, with others from Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
“It doesn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you’re on, everyone views these elections as going to be critical,” said Jonathan Barsade, AID Coalition’s president.
Israelis planning to travel from the U.S., United Kingdom and Canada told The Associated Press they felt a sense of obligation to try to preserve Israel’s democracy.
Hadar Susskind, 53, said he wants a new Israeli government to reverse course in the West Bank and Gaza, halting settlement activity and settler violence in the former and allowing for reconstruction in the latter.
He and four relatives who live in the U.S. were flying back to “reaffirm Israel’s democracy,” he said.
“This government is digging the hole deeper every day,” he said. “The first thing the new government needs to do is put the shovel down.”
Dahlia Scheindlin, an American-Israeli political analyst, said the mobilization effort this year is notable, compared with past elections. And while many campaigns have focused on anti-Netanyahu sentiment, she said it’s unclear overall how those flying in will vote.
“There are also expats coming in to vote for the pro-Netanyahu side,” Scheindlin said.
Some voters previously supported Netanyahu but say their views changed
Netanyahu’s main opponent, Gadi Eisenkot, is a centrist politician and former military chief of staff who has pledged to establish a state commission of inquiry to investigate the Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s conduct during the war. Eisenkot says he wants to restore the country’s standing with international allies.
Natra, who described her politics as center-right, said she voted for Netanyahu in the 1990s. But now, she said, his government’s inability to take responsibility for the failures that led to the Oct. 7 attacks and his support for the ultra-Orthodox community have turned her away.
Natra’s younger sister, 57-year-old Tamar Ichilov, said the “horrible things” Israel is doing in Gaza and the occupied West Bank motivated her to travel to Israel to vote. She said Israel is consumed by a “vendetta” and intent to “destroy” after the Oct. 7 attacks, and she believes its actions have contributed to rising antisemitism.
“People don’t like us, and I can’t blame them,” she said in Tel Aviv, shortly after landing at Israel’s main international airport.
Record numbers of Israelis left in recent years, and some say they hope to return
A record number of Israelis have moved away in recent years, a trend that began in 2022 and peaked amid the wars and turmoil following the Oct. 7 attacks, according to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
Eti Wissotzky Cohen, 44, said she settled last year in the U.K. with her husband and two children after growing increasingly alarmed by Israel’s democratic backsliding and the shrinking space for liberal voices. But it was the first war with Iran in June 2025 that convinced Cohen the Israeli government would do anything to stay in power.
“They’re looking at the Israeli population as pawns,” she said, telling AP she flew back to Israel to vote for the center-left Democrats party.
Cohen said she wants to return to Israel to live someday but would find it difficult with Netanyahu in power.
Zorik Nitzan also said he still believes in “the dream of Israel” but moved to Canada just over a decade ago “for a better, easier life.”
He is traveling to Israel a few days before the election, he said, because it feels like “the last chance … to beat the Netanyahu movement and to get this country back on course.”
___
Melzer reported from Nahariya, Israel.