All Naftali Bennett ever wanted was to be Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-hand man. Instead, the one-time protégé now finds himself on the brink of ending his former mentor’s long term in office and replacing him as Israel’s prime minister. The question is: how badly does he want revenge?
For years Bennett, 49, hero-worshipped Netanyahu, 71, from afar, practically modelling his career on that of his idol. He served in the same elite commando unit of the Israeli military, becoming an officer. Just like him, he then moved to New York to pursue his early career in America; Netanyahu’s had been in diplomacy, Bennett became a high-tech entrepreneur. After succeeding there, he returned to Israel to enter politics.
In 2006 he felt that his wish had been fulfilled when he was appointed chief of staff to the man who was leader of the opposition: Netanyahu. At first he was even prepared to do the job voluntarily, without pay.
It was the nadir of Netanyahu’s political career: his party, Likud, had just been walloped by voters, plummeting to 12 seats in the 120-member Knesset. Bennett immediately went about making plans to revive its fortunes, believing that he would have a central part in Likud if he was successful.
He reckoned, however, without his boss’s domineering wife.
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Bennett, together with a newfound ally, Ayelet Shaked, like him a high-tech professional, tried to bring businesslike order to the party leader’s office. He was constantly peppered, though, by demands from Sara Netanyahu to know her husband’s whereabouts at all times, and to vet those with access to him.
At one point Bennett blurted out: “Mrs Netanyahu, I work for your husband, not for you” — and it was a downward trajectory from there.
Soon he found himself being frozen out of the inner circle. When Mrs Netanyahu discovered that he and Shaked were being paid a small amount through funds donated to her husband personally, she demanded that they return the money.
By early 2008 Bennett and Shaked were both out of their jobs. Bennett has never publicly spoken about the ordeal, save to once compare his time with Mrs Netanyahu to a special forces course on how to evade capture and behave under enemy interrogation.
In the next few years he found that any path to political office within the Likud framework, whether as a Knesset candidate or a senior government official, was blocked to him. The Netanyahu family has a long memory.
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He did not give up his aspirations, however, and together with his ally set his sights on a smaller right-wing party, Jewish Home, which was then languishing in the polls and in need of new direction.
In a whirlwind campaign, he won the party’s leadership election with two thirds of the membership vote. A few months later he was in the Knesset, heading a party with 12 seats.
From this point on, Netanyahu was forced to take Bennett into his coalition considerations. He begrudgingly appointed him business minister in 2013 and then after another election in 2015, education minister.
But Bennett’s revival of a rival right-wing party only solidified the Netanyahus’ enmity towards him, especially as people began talking of him as a future leader of the entire Israeli right wing.
In the elections from 2015 onwards, Netanyahu devoted much of Likud’s resources to battling Bennett and Jewish Home rather than the centre-left opposition parties.
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The depth of the animosity was laid bare in court this week during Netanyahu’s trial for bribery and fraud. A prosecution witness, the former head of Israel’s most popular website, testified how he had been put under pressure by the prime minister’s representatives to publish smears against Bennett and his family.
When Bennett had ideas above his station, such as being appointed defence minister, Netanyahu undermined him within his own party by engaging with other senior members and the rabbis who were the party’s powerbrokers.
Frustrated, Bennett broke in late 2018 with Jewish Home, establishing his own party, Yamina, but the right-wing field was so crowded that he failed to win any seats in the first election of 2019.
However, with Netanyahu by then fighting for his political survival — a struggle that has paralysed Israeli politics — the country was embarking on a series of deadlocked elections during which the tenacious Bennett staged a comeback, returning to the Knesset later in 2019.
After four elections in the past two years, Netanyahu still has no majority, but the fragmented opposition, ranging from Jewish nationalists on the right to Arab communists on the left, is incapable of getting together to form a new government.
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Bennett is now pivotal. His Yamina party may have won only seven seats in the latest election, on March 23, but that is enough to make him a kingmaker — or even a king.
Netanyahu, anxious to remain prime minister and to pass an immunity law that would halt his corruption trial, is finally prepared to offer Bennett what he always wanted: a senior cabinet post by his side, perhaps even deputy prime minister; to merge Yamina into Likud, with voting rights in its central committee; and to position Bennett as his likely heir.
On the other side of the Knesset, however, the bloc of opposition parties are prepared to make Bennett prime minister immediately, for the next two years, if he joins them in a government that will finally remove Netanyahu.
In public Bennett remains non-committal and promises to do “whatever is best for Israel”. In private, he is saying he will never trust Netanyahu again, and is prepared to bring his long rule to an end.
However, he fears angering his right-wing base by joining a government that will include centrist and left-wing parties.
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Some suggest that he has never quite escaped from his admiration of his abusive former mentor. “In his heart Naftali still wants to be Netanyahu’s prodigal son,” said one of his advisors. “But he wants to be prime minister and in his mind he knows that Netanyahu will do everything to stop that happening.”
The future of Israeli politics may soon be determined by the battle between Naftali Bennett’s heart and mind.