Naftali Bennett, propelled by coronavirus crisis, challenges Netanyahu

Then, last May, Netanyahu left Bennett and his six seats out of the unity government, hoping that this would finish him off for good. This left Bennett in an opposition made up mostly of center-left parties and the Arab Joint List. As it turned out, it was the best thing Netanyahu could do for him. Within just two months, the head of the right-wing settler party surpassed them all in terms of popularity. With Netanyahu plummeting in the polls and the official chairman of the opposition Yair Lapid unable to take off, Bennett has emerged as the big winner in the coronavirus crisis.

That is hardly the end of the Bennett phenomenon. He has managed to challenge Netanyahu from the right and present himself as a candidate for the office of prime minister. Actually, support for Bennett increased the moment he cut off his dependence on Netanyahu and positioned himself as an alternative. He is almost the only beneficiary in what is seen as a government fiasco of historic proportions.

Over the last few weeks, Bennett has also intensified his attacks on Netanyahu, using every interview he can to accuse the prime minister of putting his personal issues first before actually dealing with the crisis, while noting that this kind of behavior is disgraceful. This line of attack has proven itself too, and Bennett continues to gain popularity. Like a magnet, he is even drawing seats in polls from centrist Blue and White voters. Disappointed with their own party, they see Bennett as a viable alternative.

What makes this especially fascinating is the idea that Bennett is an unapologetic right-winger who wears a yarmulke and whose major blocs of supporters are the settler community and the far right — the very people who support annexation of West Bank settlements, weakening the legal system and diminishing the power of the Supreme Court. Measured in terms of each of these parameters, Bennett is far more extreme than Netanyahu and the Likud.

How did Bennett do all this? How was he able to make himself the unofficial head of a shadow government? Will he be able to maintain this new standing? Will he succeed where others before him — including several chiefs of staff turned into politicians — have failed and bring about Netanyahu’s downfall?

Bennett is a disciple of Netanyahu. He worked alongside him as his chief of staff at the lowest point of his (Netanyahu’s) political career, when Netanyahu headed a party with just 12 seats. At the time, many people thought that Netanyahu had reached the end of the road. Then Israel’s second war in Lebanon broke out in 2006. People lost faith in the country’s leaders, and support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dropped to the single digits. Netanyahu played his cards wisely, presenting an official alternative without being overly aggressive. Every day he paid a visit to cities in the north, which had been targeted by Hezbollah’s rockets. He also gave interviews to the foreign press, becoming the country’s shadow foreign minister as well as shadow prime minister. Even people in the center of the country appreciated this approach so that within just a few weeks every poll named Netanyahu as the leading candidate for prime minister.

Of course, Netanyahu acted very differently from behind the scenes. He encouraged and supported anti-government protests and put Bennett in charge of these “special assignments.” In fact, even today Bennett is unwilling to talk about what really happened.

Today, Bennett seems to have adopted Netanyahu’s old playbook. He takes to the streets and meets with victims of the coronavirus, and he attacks the government and its leader. He calls on the country to close ranks and speaks about the virtues of “togetherness.” In other words, he offers a mirror image of Netanyahu, who is seen as divisive and incendiary and as someone who is trying to stop the protests against him just to avoid criminal charges.

In many ways, the wave of demonstrations, led largely by the left, have served Bennett directly rather than Netanyahu’s other main rivals like Yair Lapid and Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman.

At this point, it seems obvious that Bennett is a way station of sorts for everyone disappointed with the Likud and the Blue and White parties. The fact that he is careful to downplay his most extreme positions on the peace process and the courts seems to be helping him. Nor does anyone know who will appear on his party’s list in the next election. In that sense, Yamina is the kind of party that is full of hot air but will likely drop in the polls as soon as it is forced to give clear answers. Right now, one of the major questions is whether he would be willing to sit in a new Netanyahu government. Bennett likes to answer that if that were to happen, he would be prime minister. As the next election gets closer, however, he will need to be more specific. If he rejects Netanyahu categorically, he could lose those voters for appearing to collaborate with the left just to bring Netanyahu down. On the other hand, he will also have to answer whether he would be willing to sit in a government with the ultra-Orthodox. Avigdor Liberman has already announced that he would not sit with the ultra-Orthodox under any circumstances. It is hard to imagine Bennett risking such an unequivocal message. It would stand in direct contrast with the message he is trying to relay of unity between the right and the left and between the religious and the secular.

That is the trap that Bennett now faces. Nevertheless, even if he does lose some seats, he seems to portend the end of Netanyahu’s long reign as the undisputed leader of the right.