JEWISH SENTINEL

JEWISH SENTINEL • JUNE 18 - 24, 2021 31 Bennett continued from page 8 19 seats at the ballot box. Togeth- er, Bennett and Lapid controlled 31 seats, equal to the 31 won by the Li- kud-Yisrael Beytenu joint list led by Netanyahu at the time. Netanyahu had no choice. Ben- nett was appointed the economy minister and Lapid the finance minister. The Haredi parties Shas and United Torah Judaism were shunted aside in favor of the new reformers. It was a stunning first showing for Bennett, both at the ballot box and at the coalition negotiations. But it was not to last. Netanyahu broke up the gov- ernment early, and in the 2015 snap election Bennett’s Jewish Home dropped from 12 seats to eight — still enough to wrangle from Netanyahu the post of edu- cation minister. In the four years of that govern- ment, and increasingly acutely in 2018, Bennett grew frustrated with the Jewish Home party he had led through two elections. It was an old party — Jewish Home was a new name for the old National Re- ligious Party — built on old insti- tutions and an aging activist base. But it was Jewish Home’s spir- itual leaders who most rankled the independent-minded ex-high- tech CEO. Religious figures such as Rabbi Haim Druckman had a habit of speaking with Netanyahu directly, over Bennett’s head, and then trying to pressure him at Net- anyahu’s behest. In November 2018, after the lat- est Liberman-Netanyahu spat saw Liberman resign as defense minis- ter, Bennett publicly demanded the post for himself. And just as pub- licly, Netanyahu refused. He viewed himself as a competi- tor to Netanyahu, not a retainer to be called to heel by rabbinic fiat. With Netanyahu seemingly trying to hold him back and Jewish Home’s rab- binic echelon seemingly willing to play along, Bennett rebelled. In December, he and Shaked walked out on the party — Ben- nett’s stint in Jewish Home, as in most things, had lasted just over six years — to establish the New Right party. It was the latest in a long list of all-or-nothing gambles for the rest- less Bennett. This time, it failed. I n the April 2019 election, the first of Israel’s four polls in two years, Bennett crashed out of the Knesset, narrowly failing to clear the 3.25% vote threshold. Netanyahu had campaigned ag- gressively against New Right and was initially satisfied with the re- sult. Bennett’s independent run had backfired. It was only on May 30 of that year, as it became clear in the fi- nal hours before he had to return his mandate to the president, that Netanyahu realized his efforts to eliminate New Right had backfired on him too. He now lacked the right-wing seats to form a govern- ment. Netanyahu had tried to crush Bennett, and discovered too late that he’d needed him. In desperation, Netanyahu engi- neered September 2019’s “re-do” election. He blamed Bennett’s po- litical adventurism for his failure to form a government and was determined to destroy him once and for all at the ballot box. Ne- tanyahu even went to the trouble of firing him from the interim government in June. But despite those efforts, the first-ever re-do election in Israel’s history gave Bennett his second chance. Chastened by his April failure, he allied New Right’s slate to Rafi Peretz’s Jewish Home and Beza- lel Smotrich’s National Union, and even agreed that Shaked, not he, would hold the top spot — though the alliance agreed he would have the top cabinet post- ing of the list. Yamina won seven seats in the September 2019 elec- tion, and a weakened Bennett, now at fourth place on the list, returned to the Knesset. It is one of the most astonishing parts of Bennett’s story: From the initial success of 12 seats in 2013, his ballot-box showing has steadily dropped to 8 and then 7.Yet despite that decline, his political influence had only grown. He’d learned to play the game. Scarcely three weeks after the September race, on November 8, exactly a year after Bennett’s demand to be appointed defense minister was rebuffed, Netanyahu suddenly agreed to appoint him to the defense post. What changed? Netanyahu did poorly in the September race and began to fear that Bennett might cross the aisle and join with Gantz’s Blue and White to oust him from power. Bennett played that fear for all it was worth. But the September race, too, failed to produce a government, and the Yamina alliance ran again — this time with Bennett at the lead — in the March 2020 elec- tions. It won six seats. Bennett’s stint as defense min- ister was a short one. On May 17, 2020, after Netanyahu and Gantz formed their new unity coalition and Netanyahu no longer needed the Yamina leader, Bennett took leave of the post and headed to the opposition. Thus began his first-ever ex- perience of life in the opposition. It was another gamble. He was betting that the unity government wouldn’t survive, and he would be better positioned to take advantage of its collapse as an outside critic. By the time the March 2021 election rolled around, Bennett’s newest, most ambitious gamble was ready: a campaign focused on openly challenging a “failed” Net- anyahu for power. He shed no tears when Bezalel Smotrich led his National Union faction out of the Yamina alliance in January 2021 to run alongside the Netanyahu camp. Bennett expected Netanyahu to once again try to demolish him, and was not surprised when the prime minister threw all his sup- port and political acumen behind Smotrich’s fledgling run. After initially polling at over 20 seats in the lead up to the March election, Bennett was polling be- low 10 by election day. A nation angry at Netanyahu’s incompe- tent handling of pandemic lock- downs had changed its mind as the Netanyahu-instigated world-lead- ing vaccination drive took off. Bennett openly campaigned for prime minister, and had reason to believe it was within his reach as long as polls gave him 20 seats and predicted he would hold the de- ciding vote between the pro- and anti-Netanyahu camps in the new Knesset. But what could he accomplish with the mere seven seats he ac- tually won on election day? Could a seven-seat party — by May re- duced to six with the departure of MKAmichai Chikli — demand the premiership? Naftali Bennett, as always, didn’t blink. He leaped. To his critics, there’s something galling about the fact that he is set to take the prime minister’s seat while leading a mere six-seat fac- tion that now fails even to clear the electoral threshold in most polls. But it’s hard to think of a more characteristically Bennett-esque act. A driven soldier, a self-made tech millionaire, a political activist turned political leader, a fast-mov- ing, ever-striving, ambitious and fickle and astoundingly confident man — Israel’s newest leader is a brazen risk-taker and gambler with an unusual penchant for beating the house. Haviv Rettig Gure is the Times of Israel’s senior analyst. As a member of the Israeli army’s elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal, in 2006 Bennett served behind Hezbollah lines to destroy cells and rocket launchers. His critics are appalled that Bennett is prime minister while leading a mere six-seat faction in the Knesset. 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