Naftali Bennett and the New Hard Line in Israeli Politics

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

President, Barack, News, Politics, Wnyc, Obama, Lizza, Washington, Wickenden

4.3 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2021

⏱️ 15 minutes

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Summary

In 2013, David Remnick published a profile of Naftali Bennett. He wrote that Bennett was something new in Israeli politics, a man who would “build a sturdy electoral bridge between the religious and the secular, the hilltop outposts of the West Bank and the start-up suburbs.” Though religiously observant, Bennett was cosmopolitan: fluent on Facebook, and as quick to quote Seinfeld as he was the Talmud. He had been a leader of the settler movement, and, although he lived in a modern house in a well-to-do Tel Aviv suburb, there was no ambiguity about Bennett’s hard-line stance on the Palestinian question. He disdained the peace process of an earlier time. “I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state,” he told Remnick. “No more illusions.”

Bennett has now unseated his former boss, Benjamin Netanyahu, as Prime Minister of Israeli. Remnick spoke with two writers in the region about this political upheaval. Raja Shehadeh, who is based in Ramallah, says that the changing of the guard will mean little on the West Bank, where the recent bloody conflict was a propaganda victory for Hamas. Ruth Margalit, who is based in Tel Aviv, says that, while the peace movement seems all but dead, the changing of a political epoch, and the presence of the first Arab-Israeli party ever represented in the Knesset, has to be seen as an opportunity for change.

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0:42.5	Yeah, eBay. Things people love.
0:47.9	I'm Dorothy Wickendon. On today's Politics and More podcast, David Remnick talks with two New Yorker contributors,
0:55.9	Ruth Margulet, who reports from Tel Aviv, and Roger Shahara, who's based in the West Bank.
1:02.0	They'll discuss what Nafthali Bennett becoming prime minister means for the future of Israel
1:06.9	and Israeli-Palestinian relations.
1:12.7	About a decade ago, I went to a well-to-do suburb north of Tel Aviv
1:16.9	to meet with a youngish Israeli politician whose name was Nafthali Bennett.
1:21.8	I showed up at his house, and it was big, it was modern, and had flat-screen TVs.
1:26.9	And we sat outside, and he talked about his years
1:29.9	in the software industry, and working as a chief of staff to Benjamin Netanyahu.
1:35.6	Bennett was something pretty new in Israeli politics. He promised, I wrote then, to build a sturdy
1:41.5	electoral bridge between the religious and the secular,
1:45.2	the hilltop outposts of the West Bank and the startup suburbs.
1:49.9	Bennett was fluent in Facebook.
	...

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