LEADER: Naftali Bennett is set to become Israel’s next prime minister. He addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem on Sunday. Photo: Jonathan Sindel / AP / NTB
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Naftali Bennett, who on Sunday took a long step towards becoming Israel’s next prime minister, is a multimillionaire who became known for his religious-nationalist rhetoric.
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The 49-year-old, who throughout his political career has wooed right-wing nationalist voters, is the leader of the Yamina party, which advocates that Israel annex large parts of the occupied West Bank.
With a shaved head, a discreet kippa and perfect American English, he is ultra-liberal on the economy and uncompromising towards Iran.
He shares ideology and views with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has served in several of his governments, but in the last couple of years the two have become increasingly at odds with each other.
After the eleven-day long war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Bennett finally agreed to join center-right politician Yair Lapid to form a coalition that could remove Netanyahu from power after twelve years as prime minister.
Rotating Prime Minister post
Lapid has offered to share power with Bennett and let him be prime minister in the first round before taking over later.
In a speech Sunday night, Bennett claimed that the left would give him support to lead a coalition government.
– The left makes compromises that are far from easy for them when they give me the role of prime minister, he said.
Lapid has until Wednesday to put together a coalition with 61 seats out of the 120 that make up the Knesset National Assembly.
Religious-nationalist Yamina won seven seats in the last election in March, although one member of the group refuses to join a coalition against Netanyahu.
Special Forces
Bennett is a former special forces soldier who is the son of American Jews from California, and lives with his wife Galit and their four children in Raanana, north of Tel Aviv.
He entered politics after selling his IT company for $ 145 million in 2005, and the following year he became chief of staff to Netanyahu, which was in opposition at the time.
After working for Netanyahu for a few years, he became the leader of the Yesha Council in 2010, which lobbyes for West Bank settlers.
Hard comments
He took voters by storm in 2012 when he took over the right-wing nationalist party Jewish Home, which was about to disappear. He quadrupled the party’s support with a series of explosive comments about the Palestinians.
In 2013, he said, among other things, that Palestinian terrorists should be shot, not released.
He also claimed that the West Bank is not occupied because “there was never a Palestinian state there”, and that one can never resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, but must endure it, just like “a grenade splinter in the ass”.
Bennett has been both Minister of Defense and Minister of Finance and Education.
In 2018, he renamed the Jewish Home to Yamina (to the right) and was part of Netanyahu’s coalition that collapsed the same year.
Not invited
But he was not asked to join a new Netanyahu-led coalition government last year, which is seen as an expression of Netanyahu’s personal contempt for him, despite sharing ideology.
In opposition and with the corona pandemic ravaging the background, Bennett has dampened his right-wing radical rhetoric and instead focused on the health crisis. He has thus tried to increase support by making plans to fight the virus and help the economy on the right track.
“In the years to come, we must put aside issues such as annexation and a Palestinian state and focus on gaining control of the corona pandemic, recovering the economy and repairing internal divisions,” he said in a radio interview in November.
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