Naftali Bennett: the right-wing millionaire who may end Netanyahu era

Naftali Bennett has agreed to join centrist Yair Lapid in a coalition to oust Israel’s veteran premier Benjamin Netanyahu

Lapid has offered to share power, letting Bennett serve the first term in a rotating premiership

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Naftali Bennett and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:14pm, 31 May 2021Updated: 2:14pm, 31 May 2021

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s potential next prime minister, is a self-made tech millionaire who dreams of annexing most of the occupied West Bank.

Bennett has said that creation of a Palestinian state would be suicide for Israel, citing security reasons.

But the standard-bearer of Israel’s religious right and staunch supporter of Jewish settlements said on Sunday he was joining forces with his political opponents to save the country from political disaster.

The son of American immigrants, Bennett, 49, is a generation younger than 71-year-old Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader.

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 long and often rocky relationship with Netanyahu, working between 2006 and 2008 as a senior aide to the then-opposition leader before leaving on reported bad terms.