Israelis headed to the polls Monday for the third time in less than a year to decide whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will win a fourth consecutive term — and fifth overall — while facing a criminal indictment.

After two inconclusive elections, Netanyahu has campaigned furiously in a desperate bid to secure a narrow 61-seat majority in the Knesset — Israel’s parliament — with his hard-line religious and nationalist allies.

With four hours to go, the voter turnout was 56.3 percent, a 3 percent hike from the September elections and the highest by the same time of day since the 1999 elections, according to The Times of Israel.

Although opinion polls have predicted another stalemate that could lead to yet another election, political analysts Amit Segal and Aviv Bushinsky on Channel 12 said they believed the latest contest would prove to be decisive, The Times of Israel reported.

Former Labor party leader Shelly Yachimovich told Channel 12 that “there’s real panic” in the Blue and White party, which is led by retired army chief of staff Benny Gantz.

“It’s no accident Blue and White leaders are in Tel Aviv with megaphones, because the turnout in their heartland is weak,” she says.

“They may come to regret turning down President Rivlin’s suggestion of a power-sharing rotation with Netanyahu” made after the September elections, Yachimovich said.

Hanging over Netanyahu is a trial that begins March 17 on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust — all of which he has vehemently denied.

He stands accused of accepting lavish gifts from billionaire pals and promising to promote advantageous legislation for a major news outlet in exchange for favorable coverage.

Netanyahu — popularly known as Bibi — faces stiff competition from Gantz, who accused the prime minister’s Likud party of spreading bogus reports about the coronavirus to suppress voter turnout, according to the Times of Israel.

“It doesn’t bother the Likud propagandists to promote with all [their] strength the message that there’s the coronavirus in Givatayim. Did you ask yourselves why in fact Givatayim? Because it’s a stronghold of Blue and White,” Gantz tweeted, referring to a city near Tel Aviv.

“This is exactly what Netanyahu intends to do tomorrow,” Gantz added. “He intends to disrupt election day, spread fake news in every area identified with Blue and White.”

Gantz was alluding to media reports that parts of a mall in Givatayim were closed amid fears that a shopper — who had returned to Israel from the US via Italy — was infected with COVID-19, the news outlet reported.

“There’s no hindrance to go to the mall in Givatayim and to continue [one’s] daily routine,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. “The Health Ministry doesn’t put out statements on suspected [carriers of the virus] or those who were examined but only about verified cases.”

The Likud party slammed Gantz for “talking nonsense.”

“A vaccine for the coronavirus will be found before [Gantz] finds a way to form a government without [Joint List MK] Ahmad Tibi,” the party posted on its Twitter account.

The coronavirus outbreak in Israel was being felt Monday as paramedics dressed in hazmat suits stood guard at multiple polling sites where residents under quarantine voted while wearing face masks and gloves, Reuters reported.

Twelve people have been infected in the country and about 5,500 remained under home quarantine as of Monday, officials said.

Health Minister Yaakov Litzman said he hoped coronavirus fears “will not have any effect at all, because we did all of the things that we should have done.”

After voting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said: “The corona thing is completely under control. Today we’ve taken all the precautions that are necessary, people can go and vote, with complete confidence.”

President Reuven Rivlin, who is responsible for choosing a candidate for prime minister, will then have up to six weeks to form a coalition.

If he fails, another candidate will have 28 days to form an alternative coalition. If that effort also fails, new elections would be forced.

“This is usually a holiday, but to be honest I have no festivity in me, just a sense of deep shame before you, the citizens of Israel,” Rivlin said Monday.

“We don’t deserve this. We don’t deserve another horrible and filthy campaign like the one that ends today and we don’t deserve this endless instability. We deserve a government that will work for us,” he added.

With Post wires