The Man Who Could Replace Israel's Netanyahu

If the coalition is ratified by parliament within the coming week, Benjamin Netanyahu will be replaced as prime minister by Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old technology millionaire and former cabinet minister whose politics are further to the right than his own.

Israel's political opposition has pulled together a government designed to end Benjamin Netanyahu's cumulative 15 years in power. If the coalition is ratified by parliament within the coming week, he'll be replaced as prime minister by Naftali Bennett, a 49-year-old technology millionaire and former cabinet minister whose politics are further to the right than his own. To get where he's gotten, though, Bennett's agreed to ally in government with partners whose opposing views could moderate policy. 1. What is Bennett best known for? Bennett is the head of the Yamina party, a predominantly religious faction that opposes Palestinian statehood and wants to annex large sections of the West Bank, territory Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war. In fact, Netanyahu only began advancing annexation after Bennett made the idea a vote-getter. Bennett's also a hardliner on Iran. The new government, however, is made up of a jumble of parties with sometimes conflicting ideologies that banded together expressly to remove Netanyahu. To that end, it's expected to try to sideline contentious issues such as Palestinian statehood and focus instead on things like getting the economy back on track after the coronavirus pandemic. 2. How did Bennett, the head of a small party, get propelled into the prime minister's seat?