Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, ahead of being replaced at midnight on Thursday by his partner in the outgoing government, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, announced on Wednesday night that he would not be on the ballot when Israel goes to the polls on November 1.
“Today I conclude over a year of serving as your prime minister,” Bennett, in televised remarks, said. “There is no harder job, but there is also no greater privilege.
“The State of Israel is the love of my life, along with my family,” he continued as he promised to remain a “loyal servant of the country.”
The decision comes a week after Bennett and Lapid announced their intention to dissolve the parliament, seeking to push for a new round of elections as the coalition was in great danger of being ousted by the opposition.
Dr. Yonatan Freeman, from the Department of Political Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Media Line that Bennett’s decision to take a break from politics does not mean that he has left for good.
“We have many examples in our political history where people who’ve lost or had a very bad position in politics left, and then came back and were able to be successful once again,” Freeman said.
Dr. Zeev Hanin, from the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, agreed and added that taking time off might have been the only way for Bennett to save his political career.
Currently “he’s unable to rearrange and restructure his political party, and that is why he preferred to step down,” he told The Media Line.
“To continue and to lose, or not to pass the [3.25%] electoral threshold [for a party to enter the Knesset] would be the end of his political career,” Hanin said.
Freeman added that Bennett proved his word is his bond by keeping his promise to hand over the premiership to Lapid.
“I think the fact that he announced that he is leaving is also a way of showing that in the end, Lapid will be getting the premiership earlier than was expected, because he [Bennett] could have tried to stay on. It really shows that he has confidence in Lapid,” the professor said.
Freeman noted that the polls show that when it comes to who the public thinks is best suited to be prime minister, Lapid is No. 2 after Opposition Leader Binyamin Netanyahu, “and he [Lapid] will probably get a little bit more support.”
Hanin said Bennett is retiring at the highest possible point. “He actually was everything that he wanted to be. He steps down from the position of prime minister.”
After analyzing Bennett’s speech, Freeman said he might have left a door open to a return to the political arena down the road.
He noted how Bennett said there will soon “be additional important news in fields that relate to our future” concerning Israel’s strength and Israel’s power, without going into detail.
“I think that he knows that there’s stuff going on behind the scenes on a certain development which we might be hearing about soon, which may have gained more ground while Bennett was there,” said Freeman.
He believes the promising sentence has to do with one of two topics. Either the Iranian nuclear deal or an announcement of normalization with another Arab country. “Some say maybe Saudi Arabia, maybe others,” he added.
“It might also have to do with [US President Joe] Biden coming here,” the professor continued.
There might be news soon that could indeed strengthen Bennett’s legacy and provide him some political points to show what he accomplished or what he helped to make happen, Freeman said.
As for the future of Bennett’s party, Yamina, Hanin believes it’s unclear at the moment whether it will be able to preserve its brand.
He added that the party will probably divide into two groups.
One will try to establish some sort of a political platform in order to run together with the Likud, and the other could either keep the Yamina name or change it, and try to join another political party, Hanin explained.
Freeman agreed and added that Yamina has been dealt a heavy blow.
In other words, he said, “it might not just be Bennett leaving the political scene; Yamina might be leaving the political scene as well.”
Yamina was really a party about one person, he explained; Bennett formed it so he could run for office.
“Usually, in those parties, once the person leaves the scene the party leaves as well,” Freeman said.
If that’s the case, he believes that most of Yamina’s voters will join the Netanyahu-centered right-wing bloc.
“The ones who will gain from that are either parties that support Netanyahu being the next prime minister, or Netanyahu’s own party, the Likud,” Freeman said.