Naftali Bennett appears to be the leading candidate to replace Benjamin Netanyahu atop Israeli politics, and the reason is simple: He’s the rare Bibi disciple-turned-rival who has clearly learned from his former boss’s own political rise.
Bennett in 2021 became Israel’s first post-Bibi premier in a decade as part of a rotating premiership with Yair Lapid, a centrist who had assembled a shaky coalition to oust the Likud from power. That government fell after about a year and a half and Netanyahu returned to the big chair.
Now Bennett is laying the groundwork for a comeback. A recent Channel 12 poll shows him leading Netanyahu in a head-to-head matchup by 11 and reveals that a party led by Bennett would be one of the largest in the Knesset. That combination shows a clear path to the premiership for Bennett if the trend holds.
Of course, opposition leader Benny Gantz has faded as a challenger to Netanyahu, but there’s reason to believe Bennett’s poll showing could be more resilient. In fact, the more Bennett seems to follow Netanyahu’s own path to power from earlier in his own career, the more the polls reward him.
Netanyahu began his political career in an ostensibly apolitical, or at least nonpartisan, role. Charismatic and telegenic, he was a diplomat and spokesman in the 1980s. He created a public profile in the media, built a rolodex of important political journalists, and ably made Israel’s case to the world from the outside. In the ’90s, he took over Likud leadership and then became Israel’s youngest-ever prime minister.
In 1999, he lost reelection to Ehud Barak, and made the decision to take a temporary break from politics. He resigned his Knesset seat and went into the private sector, speaking up on political issues as a self-described “concerned citizen” who was learning “to listen.” Within a couple years, Barak’s government was collapsing and Netanyahu passed up a rare opportunity to jump right back in to electoral politics to challenge him, choosing instead to bide his time.
Many see that decision as a mistake in retrospect because Bibi expected his Likud successor, Ariel Sharon, to be a caretaker premier and yet Sharon held on to office and reshaped Israeli politics. But it almost certainly paved the way for Netanyahu’s eventual turn as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. By the time Sharon was felled by a stroke, he had splintered the Likud party. To complete the disengagement from Gaza, Sharon was forced to start his own centrist party. He took top deputies with him, which cleared the Likud of the main potential challengers to Bibi when he stood for party leadership in the wake of Sharon’s departure. The party was all his from that point on.
Bennett’s current strategy follows a similar path. In Israel, it has often been beneficial for aspiring leaders to avoid rancorous political moments and stay above the fray. That’s why Bennett is spending much time in the U.S. these days while party leaders in Israel fight over the prosecution of the war in Gaza and the possible war in Lebanon.
Netanyahu may seem vulnerable to attack but his current rivals have bungled their chance to do so. Benny Gantz left the unity government and war cabinet but couldn’t bring down the government, so he has languished in opposition without a plan. Yair Lapid was well-positioned to reprise his role as centrist unity dealmaker, but he decided to launch sharp attacks on Netanyahu that didn’t land. He blamed Bibi “and the ‘death cabinet’” for the deaths of six hostages executed by Hamas three weeks ago, a remarkably tone-deaf and divisive outburst. He called Netanyahu “soulless” and an “existential threat”—par for the course in rough-and-tumble Israeli politics but far from the note of optimism and unity he once represented. The result: Only Bennett led Netanyahu in that Channel 12 poll.
Another advantage Bennett has derived from spending time with the American media is that he doesn’t have to moderate his views out of fear of appearing to take sides in Israel’s domestic debate. Bennett has also lived in the United States for periods of time in his childhood, like Netanyahu, and his parents are American immigrants to Israel, so his easy grasp of English makes him a popular choice for U.S. networks. Asked by ABC News “at what cost” must Israel defend itself if—to use Hamas’s fabricated number—40,000 Palestinians have been killed, Bennett responded that half of those killed in Gaza are terrorists: “And I think we all agree that it’s a wonderful thing when murderers and terrorists disappear. That’s what you did to bin Laden, and that’s what we’re doing to these horrible, horrible murderers.”
When Bennett appeared on Dan Senor’s podcast “Call Me Back,” the former prime minister insisted he would take a tougher approach to Hamas: “What I would do is I would tell Hamas, there’s only one deal. Here’s the deal. Either you raise a white flag, release the hostages, and then we won’t kill you. And then we get, say, 5,000 or 10,000 of the leading terrorists on boats and get them out of Gaza, or we’re coming to kill you. And then I would turn to the army, the IDF commander and say, go, go defeat him. And you stop only when he raises the white flag and releases the hostages. Until then don’t waver.”
Get out or get dead, essentially.
When asked on CNN if Netanyahu was prolonging the war for his own political benefit, Bennett responded: “I am not in the brain of Mr. Netanyahu.”
The balance Bennett is striking allows for implicit criticism of the current government, of course. But the key is to couch it in terms of what Israel needs to do and what Israel has a right to do. Bennett is first and foremost acting as an advocate for Israel’s right to defend itself.
He is not, as he says, in the brain of Mr. Netanyahu. But he has clearly learned from that brain. So far, it’s serving him well.
