Naftali Bennett, Israel’s probably subsequent prime minister, is a self-made tech millionaire who goals of annexing many of the occupied West Bank.
Bennett has mentioned that creation of a Palestinian state can be suicide for Israel, citing safety causes.
But the standard-bearer of Israel’s spiritual proper and staunch supporter of Jewish settlements mentioned on Sunday he was becoming a member of forces along with his political opponents to save lots of the nation from political catastrophe.
The son of American immigrants, Bennett, 49, is a era youthful than 71-year-old Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving chief.
A former commando, Bennett named his eldest son after Netanyahu’s brother, Yoni, who was killed in an Israeli raid to free hijacked passengers at Uganda’s Entebbe airport in 1976.
Bennett has had a protracted and sometimes rocky relationship with Netanyahu, working between 2006 and 2008 as a senior aide to the then-opposition chief earlier than leaving on reported unhealthy phrases.
Bennett stormed into nationwide politics in 2013, revamping a pro-settler get together and serving as minister of defence in addition to of schooling and the economic system in varied Netanyahu governments.
A former chief of Yesha, the primary settler motion within the West Bank, Bennett made annexation of elements of the territory that Israel captured in a 1967 battle a serious function of his political platform.
But as head of a so-called authorities of “change” that will include left-wing and centrist parties, while relying on support in parliament from Arab legislators, following through on annexation would be politically unfeasible.
Bennett said on Sunday both the right and left would have to compromise on such ideological matters.
Born in the Israeli city of Haifa to immigrants from San Francisco, Bennett is a modern-Orthodox religious Jew. He lives with his wife, Gilat, a dessert chef, and their four children in the affluent Tel Aviv suburb of Raanana.
Like Netanyahu, Bennett speaks fluent American-accented English and spent some of his childhood in north America, where his parents were on sabbatical.
While working in the high-tech sector, Bennett studied law at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. In 1999, he formed a start-up and then moved to New York, eventually selling his anti-fraud software company, Cyota, to U.S. security firm RSA for $145 million in 2005.
POLICY
Last year, as Netanyahu’s government sought to press ahead with West Bank annexation and settlement building in the final months of the Trump administration, Bennett, then defence chief, said: “The building momentum in the country must not be stopped, even for a second.”
The annexation plan was ultimately scrapped when Israel formalised ties with the United Arab Emirates. Analysts see little likelihood of it being resurrected underneath Donald Trump’s Democratic successor, President Joe Biden, if ever.
Nonetheless, Palestinians are more likely to regard Bennett’s elevation as a blow to hopes of a negotiated peace and an impartial state, the long-standing diplomatic method that Biden favours.
After Israel in March held its fourth election in two years Bennett, who leads the far-right Yamina get together, mentioned a fifth vote can be a nationwide calamity and entered talks with the centre-left block that kinds the primary opposition to Netanyahu.
An advocate of liberalising the economic system, Bennett has voiced help for slicing authorities crimson tape and taxes.
Unlike a few of his former allies on the spiritual proper, Bennett is relatively liberal on points reminiscent of homosexual rights and the connection between faith and state in a rustic the place Orthodox rabbis wield robust affect.
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