Naftali Bennett

“	I've killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there's no problem with that.	„
	~ Naftali Bennett

Naftali Bennett (Hebrew: נַפְתָּלִי בֶּנֶט; born 25 March 1972) is an Israeli politician who previously served as the 13th prime minister of Israel from 13 June 2021 to 30 June 2022. Bennett has served as the leader of the New Right party since 2018, having previously led The Jewish Home party between 2012 and 2018.

Biography

Born and raised in Haifa, the son of immigrants from the United States, Bennett served in the Sayeret Matkal and Maglan special forces units of the Israel Defense Forces, commanding many combat operations, and subsequently became a software entrepreneur. In 1999, he co-founded and co-owned the US company Cyota. The company was sold in 2005 for $145 million. He has also served as CEO of Soluto, an Israeli cloud computing service, sold in 2013 for a reported $100–130 million.

During the time that Bennett was living in the United States and building his career as a software entrepreneur, he repeatedly traveled to Israel to do reserve duty. He served during the First Intifada and in the Israeli security zone in Lebanon during the 1982–2000 South Lebanon conflict. He commanded many operations. Among other missions, he served as an officer in Operation Grapes of Wrath.

After his regular IDF service, Bennett received a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During the Second Intifada, he participated in Operation Defensive Shield.

He was called up as a reservist in the Maglan special forces unit during the 2006 Lebanon War and participated in a search and destroy mission behind enemy lines, operating against Hezbollah rocket launchers.

One of Bennett's actions as a commando officer became highly controversial. During Operation Grapes of Wrath, while leading a force of 67 Maglan soldiers operating in southern Lebanon, Bennett radioed for support after his unit came under mortar fire. The IDF launched an artillery barrage to cover his force, and the shelling hit a United Nations compound in which civilians were taking refuge, an incident that became known as the Qana Massacre. A total of 106 Lebanese civilians were killed.

In February 2012 Bennett published a plan to manage the Israeli–Palestinian conflict called "The Israel Stability Initiative." The plan is based in part on parts of earlier initiatives, "Peace on Earth" by Adi Mintz and the "Elon Peace Plan" by Binyamin Elon, and relies on statements of Benjamin Netanyahu and Likud party ministers in favor of unilateral annexation of the West Bank. Bennett opposes the creation of a Palestinian state: "I will do everything in my power to make sure they never get a state."

He suggests a tripartition of the Palestinian territories, whereby Israel would unilaterally annex Area C, authority over the Gaza Strip would be transferred to Egypt, and Area A and Area B would remain with the Palestinian National Authority, but under the security umbrella of the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet to "ensure quiet, suppress Palestinian terrorism, and prevent Hamas from taking over the territory". Area C constitutes 62% of the area, and approximately 365,000 people live in Israeli settlements. Palestinians who live in this area would be offered Israeli citizenship or permanent residency status (between 48,000, according to Bennett, and 150,000, according to other surveys). Finally, Israel would invest in creating roads so Palestinians can travel between Areas A and B without checkpoints, and invest in infrastructure and joint industrial zones, because "Peace grows from below — through people, and people in daily life".

Bennett also resists immigration of Palestinian refugees now living outside the West Bank, or the connection between the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 2011 he noted that there were about 50 factories in the West Bank industrial region where Israelis and Palestinians work together, and cited this as one workable approach to finding peace between the two sides.

Bennett suggests that Israel must learn to live with the Palestinian problem without a "surgical action" of separation to two states: "I have a friend who's got shrapnel in his rear end, and he's been told that it can be removed surgically, but it would leave him disabled... So he decided to live with it. There are situations where insisting on perfection can lead to more trouble than it's worth." Bennett's "Shrapnel in the butt" thus quickly became widely known as representing his view of the Palestinian problem.

In response to Israel's release of Palestinian prisoners in 2013, Bennett said Palestinian terrorists should be shot, allegedly adding, "I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that". Bennett was widely condemned for these words, though he denied saying them, claiming he said merely that "terrorists should be killed if they pose an immediate life threat to our soldiers when in action".

In January 2013 Bennett said, "There is not going to be a Palestinian state within the tiny land of Israel", referring to the area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. "It's just not going to happen. A Palestinian state would be a disaster for the next 200 years."

In December 2014 a group of academics who oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and members of The Third Narrative, a Labor Zionist organization, called on the U.S. and E.U. to impose sanctions on Bennett and three other Israelis "who lead efforts to insure permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and to annex all or parts of it unilaterally in violation of international law". The academics, calling themselves Scholars for Israel and Palestine (SIP) and claiming to be "pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace", asked the U.S. and EU to freeze Bennett's foreign assets and impose visa restrictions. Bennett was chosen as a target for proposed sanctions because of his work in opposing the 2010 settlement freeze while he was director of the Yesha settlements council, actively supporting annexation of over 60% of the West Bank, and "pressing strongly for a policy of creeping annexation."

In October 2016 Bennett said, "On the matter of the Land of Israel, we have to move from holding action to a decision. We have to mark the dream, and the dream is that Judea and Samaria will be part of the sovereign State of Israel. We have to act today, and we must give our lives. We can't keep marking the Land of Israel as a tactical target and a Palestinian state as the strategic target."

In November 2016 Bennett said the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States gave him hope that the two-state solution would no longer be considered viable, claiming, "The era of the Palestinian state is over."

In spite of his right-wing views against a Palestinian state, while engaged in coalition negotiations for a unity government together with Yair Lapid following the 2021 Israeli legislative election during which he was offered the Prime Ministership, Bennett agreed to a policy of not annexing any territory in the West Bank and to not build any new settlements while serving as Prime Minister in a potential unity government.