Naftali Bennett, the former millionaire Netanyahu who wants to cut the post of his mentor

JERUSALEM.- Naftali Bennett, el probable future prime minister of Israel, is a rising tech millionaire who dreams of annexing most of the occupied West Bank. Citing security reasons, Bennett said the creation of the State of Palestine would be suicide for Israel.

But the Israeli religious right-wing standard-bearer and staunch supporter of Jewish settlements said on Sunday he was willing to join forces with political opponents to save the country from political disaster.

The son of American immigrants, Bennett, 49, belongs to the next generation of Benjamin Netanyahu, 71, the Longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history.

Former army commander Bennett named his eldest son after Netanyahu’s brother Yoni, who was killed in 1976 in an Israeli raid aimed at freeing kidnapped passengers at Entebbe airport, in Uganda.

Bennett had a long and at times turbulent relationship with Netanyahu, which was a senior adviser when he was leader of the opposition, between 2006 and 2008. This working relationship would have ended in bad conditions.

Bennett burst into Israel’s national politics in 2013, with the revival of a pro-colonial party. Over the years, under successive Netanyahu governments, he served as Minister of Defense, but also Minister of Education and the Economy.

Former leader of Yesha, the main pro-settlement party in the West Bank, Bennett made annexation of parts of the territory captured by Israel during the Six Day War a central theme of its political platform.

But as the head of a so-called “change” government, which will include left and center parties and depend on the support of Arab lawmakers in parliament, moving forward with annexation would be politically unworkable.

Bennett said on Sunday that the right and left will have to come to an agreement on such ideologically charged issues.

Born in Haifa to immigrant parents from San Francisco, Bennett is a modern Orthodox Jew. He lives with his wife, Gilat, a pastry teacher, and their four children in the exclusive Ra’anana neighborhood on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

Like Netanyahu, Bennett is fluent in American English and spent part of his childhood in North America, where his parents took a year off.

While working in the high-tech industry, Bennett studied law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1999 he started a startup and moved to New York City, and in 2005 he finally sold Cyota, his anti-fraud software publisher, to US security firm RSA for $ 145 million.

Last year, in the closing months of the Trump administration, as the Netanyahu administration tried to move forward with annexation of the West Bank and settlement building, Bennett, then defense minister, said declared: stop, not even a second. “

The annexation plan was finally put on hold when Israel formalized diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates. Analysts say the plan is unlikely to resume with Democrat Joe Biden succeeding Donald Trump in the White House.

Yet Palestinians are likely to view Bennett’s leadership as a bucket of cold water for hopes of a negotiated peace and an independent state, the long-standing diplomatic formula advocated by Biden.

In March, as Israel held its fourth election in two years, Bennett, who heads the far-right Yamina party, said a fifth vote would be a national calamity and started talks with the center-left bloc who is Netanyahu’s main adversary.

A proponent of liberalizing the economy, Bennett has expressed support for cutting government bureaucracy and cutting taxes.

Unlike some of his former allies on the religious right, Bennett is progressive on issues like gay rights and the relationship between religion and state, in a country where Orthodox rabbis wield powerful influence.

Translation of Jaime Arrambide

Reuters Agency

Reuters

Conocé The Trust Project