Here’s the latest.

That uncertainty did not stop the leading candidates from making triumphant late-night speeches to their supporters.

Mr. Eisenkot, a former head of the Israeli military, struck a defiant tone toward Mr. Netanyahu, saying: “Tonight we got the answer: The public opted for change.”

A few hours later, Mr. Netanyahu told supporters that his party, Likud, had emerged as the largest in Israel. “We must form a strong right-wing government,” he said.

Most of the votes were expected to be counted by Wednesday, though the final tally could take days. Lengthy negotiations could follow as political parties try to assemble a governing majority.

Both blocs may need the support of two Arab parties that, in a surprise showing, were projected to win as many as 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, Israel’s Parliament. But Mr. Netanyahu has effectively ruled out including them in his coalition. Mr. Eisenkot and his partners have also balked at the prospect.

Some analysts are considering whether Mr. Netanyahu could join Mr. Eisenkot or other opposition members to form a unity government. But that would face serious challenges, including agreement on who would serve as prime minister. A governing coalition would usually need at least 61 lawmakers, though Mr. Eisenkot has floated the idea of forming a minority government. Another possible outcome, analysts said, would be a do-over election.

Here’s what else we are covering:

• Herzog’s role: President Isaac Herzog of Israel holds a largely ceremonial position, except after national elections, when it falls to him to select a potential prime minister. He is expected to face a difficult decision this time around. Read more ›

• More votes: The exit polls do not reflect the hundreds of thousands of votes cast at special polling stations, including at military bases, hospitals, prisons and embassies. In Israel’s 2022 election, those votes tended to favor Mr. Netanyahu and his allies.

• War fears: Following reports that Mr. Netanyahu has been pushing for renewed attacks on Iran, Mr. Eisenkot warned him against abusing his power as caretaker prime minister. “Netanyahu, don’t dare use Israel’s security for your political needs,” he said in his post-election speech.

• Palestinian concerns: This is a high-stakes election for Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, but they do not have the right to vote in it. Read more ›

While the president can choose the leader of the party that won the most votes, he can also select another leader who seems more likely to assemble a coalition that can secure a vote of confidence in the Knesset.

In 2009, President Shimon Peres chose Benjamin Netanyahu — the current prime minister — even though his right-wing Likud party had won fewer votes than the centrist Kadima party.

Early exit polls on Wednesday suggest a tight race between the far-right coalition led by Mr. Netanyahu and the center-right opposition bloc that has called for change. The opposition bloc includes the Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot. But Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party appears to have received the most votes, which means he will argue that he should be selected as prime minister.

Mr. Herzog, whose job is to stay above the political fray, is expected to face a difficult decision. He must discern whether the votes show that the majority of Israelis demanded change or if they indicated a preference for another Netanyahu government.

Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition, the most right-wing in Israel’s history, has drawn international condemnation, heightened tensions with allies and divided Israelis. Mr. Herzog has repeatedly criticized what he has called “a terrible process of brutalization” creeping into Israeli society, citing violence by Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank against Palestinians and the abuse of detainees in Israeli custody, which some far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition are accused of encouraging.

The Israeli president, who can grant criminal pardons and commute sentences, has also faced pressure from President Trump, who has called on him to pardon Mr. Netanyahu as he stands trial on corruption charges. Mr. Herzog has respectfully resisted, saying that “Israel is a sovereign state governed by the rule of law.”

Mr. Netanyahu has long resisted calls for an independent commission of inquiry into the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel that set off a devastating war in Gaza. He has also refused to take responsibility for any failures that led to the attack, angering many Israelis.

But if the president taps Mr. Eisenkot, a former military chief whose son was killed in the war in Gaza and who has vowed to launch a state inquiry into the 2023 attack, there is no guarantee he will succeed in forming a government. The center-right opposition bloc would need to ally with the country’s Arab parties, which appear to have secured more parliamentary seats than ever before. The bloc’s leaders have not agreed to such an alliance, while Mr. Netanyahu has effectively ruled out including Arab parties in a governing coalition.

Both the far-right and far-left blocs face obstacles to assembling a governing majority. They would need agreements with other parties and factions that may be politically unpalatable, or even impossible.

Mansour Abbas, the leader of Raam, told a television interviewer that the turnout showed that Arab voters, who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population, had channeled their “frustration and despair” into “hope.”

He said he wanted to replace Mr. Netanyahu’s government “in every possible way” and that his first priority was to “ensure that there is a chance of forming a government” that achieved that goal.

The Arab parties’ strong showing may make them kingmakers. But building a governing coalition with Arab participation remains a fraught exercise in Israel. Many Israeli Jews believe that a parliamentary majority should not rely on the support of Arab lawmakers.

Most Arab citizens are the descendants of Palestinians who remained in their homes during the 1948 Arab-Israel war at the time of Israel’s independence.

Today, they mostly live in separate towns from Jewish Israelis and face violence and discriminatory housing policies.

Over the decades, disagreements, including over Israel’s nature as a Jewish state, have led many Arab voters to avoid the ballot box.

This week, many Arab voters said they were furious at Mr. Netanyahu for his treatment of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and for policies that they feel treat Palestinians in Israel as second-class citizens. Indeed, throughout the campaign, Mr. Netanyahu made overt appeals to anti-Arab prejudice.

Of the two Arab parties that did well on Tuesday, only Raam has joined a coalition government in the past. That happened in 2021, when it joined the short-lived anti-Netanyahu coalition of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

Raam’s participation in that government outraged many right-wing Jewish voters, and when it collapsed after roughly one year, they backed Mr. Netanyahu, who went on to form the most hard-line government in Israel’s history.

That government now faces the possibility that it may be brought down by an election result that has been deeply shaped by robust Arab turnout.

“It’s over,” he said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

The comments were a reflection of Israel’s deepening global isolation, with even once-staunch allies imposing or threatening economic sanctions and embargoes after years of war in Gaza and rampant violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

With settlers advancing into areas that were previously off limits, Britain last month decried what it called “ethnic cleansing” and announced trade sanctions on settlements that it said would also apply to entities that financed their construction. Though Israel’s banking system has not been directly targeted by sanctions, a dozen countries, including Canada, France and Spain, have said they support restrictions on trade with settlements, raising the prospect of further penalties that could affect Israeli financial institutions.

Opponents of Mr. Netanyahu’s government decried his pronouncements, which also drew a rebuke from the generally reserved central bank.

“Crypto currencies cannot serve as a route to bypass sanctions against Israel,” the Bank of Israel said in a statement. The bank added that the government would do better “to focus on preventing sanctions” and preserving Israel’s economic ties with its main trading partners.

Commentators said that Mr. Netanyahu’s outlook sounded apocalyptic, and some said it was part of a scare campaign to improve his election prospects.

Last year, amid growing global condemnation of the Israeli military’s conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza, where it has been accused of war crimes, and the imposition of some arms embargoes, he warned that Israel would have to become a more self-sufficient “super-Sparta.” That reference to the ancient, insular Greek city-state that practiced militaristic self-reliance was, to critics, a frightening scenario for a small country whose economy is largely driven by a tech sector that is reliant on foreign investment.

Gadi Eisenkot, Mr. Netanyahu’s main rival in Tuesday’s election, said in a social media post that the prime minister’s “Bibi-coin vision,” a nod to cryptocurrency, would “dismantle the Israeli economy for generations.”

“No internet purchases, no high-tech investments, no national security,” he added.

Yair Lapid, the opposition leader who has served as prime minister and finance minister, wrote on social media that a vote for Mr. Netanyahu was a vote for “a ruined economy, sanctions that will lead to insane price hikes, and no military alliance with the United States.”

And a former governor of the Bank of Israel, Jacob Frenkel, told Israel’s Channel 12 on Sunday that moving away from the international financial system would turn Israel into “a leper.”

Mr. Netanyahu later walked back his remarks slightly, saying that he had heard the criticism and that cryptocurrency was only one option to deal with potential financial sanctions.

In a somewhat jarring contrast, Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign has argued that Israel’s economy overall is healthy despite years of war, helped by record export revenues, relatively low inflation and unemployment, and a strong shekel.

But many Israelis are not feeling it. The State Comptroller, a government watchdog, warned last year that the cost of living was “skyrocketing” in part because of structural challenges in Israel’s consumer market and low competition levels.

While foreign affairs and national security have dominated the political conversation ahead of the election, a recent survey by the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group, found that the economy was the top issue for many voters heading into Tuesday.

“The Israeli government has enormous influence over our lives,” said Montaser Amro, 32, a supermarket owner in Majd, a village near the southern city of Hebron. “It chooses when roadblocks open and close, it controls the borders, and it decides on how much of our economy functions.”

He added, “Why can’t we vote when settlers living hundreds of meters away can?”

Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 and reached an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization to establish the Palestinian Authority in the 1990s. The Palestinian Authority administers parts of the West Bank and has not held parliamentary or presidential elections for roughly 20 years.

Many Palestinians have long hoped the Palestinian Authority would transform into an independent Palestinian state. In recent years, those hopes have dwindled. The Israeli government promotes the expansion of settlements in the West Bank that are widely considered illegal under international law and rejects Palestinian self-determination there and in Gaza. Palestinian officials have also failed to unify their ranks and renew their leadership.

Alaa al-Khabass, 40, a resident of Hebron, said it was unjust that Palestinians could not cast ballots.

“Israel controls just about everything related to us, and I don’t see that changing any time soon,” he said. “We should be able to vote, but we live in painful reality where we lack rights and sovereignty.”