In Israel, for the first time in 12 years, the prime minister changes: who replaced Netanyahu

Naftali Bennett will replace Benjamin Netanyahu as Israeli Prime Minister over the next two years. Bennett is known as a right-wing politician, a resolute opponent of the "two-state" formula of Israelis and Palestinians, a former special forces soldier and a millionaire. Read more about this with the BBC.

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In March elections, 49-year-old Bennett's Ha-Yamin Ha-Hadash (New Rights) party won just seven of 120 Knesset seats. But due to the fact that the two rival parties received almost equal number of votes, the votes of Bennett's party members were decisive, as they could tip the balance in a certain direction.

Bennett was offered the post of prime minister by both the current head of government, Benjamin Netanyahu, and opposition leader Yair Lapid.

Bennett, despite ideological differences with the centrist Lapid, chose the side of the opposition - and thereby ended the rule of Netanyahu, who served as prime minister the longest in the country's history: 12 years in a row.

Naftali Bennett was born in Haifa to immigrants from the United States. Like Netanyahu, he served in the Israeli army's special unit Sayeret Matkal, which deals with special operations, including the release of hostages and the capture of people considered to be Israel's enemies.

Bennett was once called Netanyahu's protégé: in 2006-2008 he was the chief of staff of the then prime minister. But then they fell out, Bennett left Likud, Netanyahu's party, joined the right-wing Jewish Home party, and in 2013 brought it to parliament.

On the subject: Israel and the Gaza Strip signed a truce: in the meantime, attacks on Jews in the United States increased

After that, Bennett served as a minister under various government structures until 2019. In 2019, his new party failed in the next elections to the Knesset. But already at the next extraordinary elections, Bennett returned to parliament.

Bennett is often called an ultranationalist, and he considers himself more right-wing than Benjamin Netanyahu. He says Israel should be the nation-state of the Jews, and argues that Israel has historical rights to the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the 1967 Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

The settlement question

Bennett has long advocated the preservation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. There are about 140 of them in these settlements, counting together with East Jerusalem, more than 600 thousand Jews live.

The settlement issue is one of the most important in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians are demanding their elimination. Netanyahu is in favor of settlements, but even Naftali Bennett does not consider him firm enough on this issue.

At the same time, Bennett supports the waiver of claims on territory in the Gaza Strip. Israel withdrew settlers and troops from there in 2005.

Bennett speaks good English and often appears on foreign TV channels defending Israel's policies. His performances are often straightforward, rude and assertive.

Once in a debate on an Israeli TV channel, when an Arab member of the Knesset declared that Jews had no right to settle in the West Bank, Bennett replied: "We had a Jewish state here before you got off the trees!"

Bennett rejects the idea of ​​two states, Israeli and Palestinian, a peace formula that is supported by most countries in the world, including current US President Joe Biden.

"I won't give up a centimeter"

“I will not give up a single centimeter of Israeli land. Period,” Bennett said in an interview in February. He believes that Israel, on the contrary, should occupy an even larger part of Judea and Samaria - this is the biblical name Bennett calls the West Bank of Jordan.

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Bennett supports the death penalty for Palestinian militants, despite the fact that in modern Israel the death penalty has never been used, with one exception, when in 1962 the Israelis hanged Nazi criminal Adolf Eichmann.

In 2018, during another outbreak of conflict with the ruling Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Bennett opposed the ceasefire. During the latest outbreak, Bennett (like many others) said that the Hamas leaders, who launched the rocket attacks on Israel, were themselves to blame for the deaths of dozens of civilians killed by the retaliatory strikes of the Israeli army.

One of the most important themes for Bennett is national pride and self-confidence. In 2014, in response to criticism of Israeli policies from the left-liberal newspapers New York Times and Haaretz, he made a satirical video, where, in the role of a hipster Jew, he endlessly apologized to everyone around him, and then, in his usual guise, declared: “That’s it, from today Stop apologizing for a day!”

Before entering politics, Naftali Bennett achieved notable success in military service and then in business. Major Bennett served in two Israeli Special Forces units and saw combat on multiple occasions. Then, after retiring, he created a startup in the field of computer technology, sold it, and became a multimillionaire.

“I don’t eat 17 steaks at a time, I don’t have a private jet or yacht. I just bought myself the freedom to do what I want,” Bennett said in a 2014 interview.

New president

The Israeli parliament voted for the candidacy of the new president of the country, Yitzhak Herzog was elected to the post, writes Slow.

The Duke was supported by 87 of 120 Knesset members. In this position, the Duke will replace Reuven Rivlin.

It is noted that this is the first president of Israel, whose father also held this position: the Duke is the son of the President of Israel (from 1983 to 1993).

From 1999 to 2001, Herzog served as government secretary under Prime Minister Ehud Barak. From 2000 to 2003 he was Chairman of the National Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2003, he was elected to the Knesset, after which he held ministerial positions. The Duke, at the head of the center-left Social Democratic Party Labor, was Netanyahu’s opponent in the parliamentary elections in 2013, writes DW.

As ForumDaily wrote earlier:

• In a little over a year, Israel has passed four electoral cycles, which cost the country several billion dollars.
• According to the results first parliamentary elections in 2019held in April, the government tried to form Benjamin Netanyahu, but he was unable to do so due to the refusal of Avigdor Lieberman, whose party won five seats in the Knesset, to join the bloc of right-wing parties. Without Lieberman, Netanyahu had 60 votes, that is, he lacked only one vote before the formation of the coalition.
• As a result, second parliamentary elections in September 2019 none of the political forces succeeded in gaining a majority in the Knesset sufficient to form the ruling coalition. The center-left bloc received a total of 56 seats, while the right-wing bloc won 55 seats. Then a lot also depended on Avigdor Lieberman - the head of the conservative party "Our Home - Israel". Lieberman has repeatedly said that he supports the government of national unity, which, in his opinion, means a government with the participation of Kahol-Lavan, Likud and Our Home - Israel. The majority of the votes were won by the Kahol-Lavan party of Benny Ganz, but Ganz said he would not enter the unity government if Netanyahu remained at the head of the Likud.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the third time in a row failed to achieve a majority in the country's parliament. Following the results of the March 2 elections, his Likud party gained 36 seats, and 61 seats are needed to control the party’s Knesset (coalition). The party of Avigdor Lieberman could be an ideal way out of the situation for Netanyahu, but Lieberman would never want to enter into a coalition with orthodox religious parties.
• April 17 Knesset gave 21 days to decide on the formation of the governmentotherwise, Israel could have held its fourth parliamentary elections. Negotiations are believed to have been hampered by the issue of supporting Netanyahu for a bill that would give him immunity from prosecution
• Leader of the Likud party Benjamin Netanyahu and leader of the Kahol-Lavan party Benny Gantz signed an agreement to create a government coalition... As part of the agreement, the parties agreed to rotate the post of prime minister: for the first 18 months Netanyahu will hold this post, then Gantz will replace him.
• The coalition Israeli government failed to agree on 2021 budget, which means that the country must hold the fourth general elections in less than 2 years. Regular elections to the Israeli parliament were held in March 2021.

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