Former Israeli PM Emerges as Wild Card in High-Stakes Election

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is preparing for a political return built around an expansive Middle East strategy. His goals include broadening the Abraham Accords, deepening trade and economic ties with Arab countries and repairing Israel’s increasingly strained relationship with the United States.

The U.S. relationship carries personal significance for Bennett, whose parents moved to Israel from San Francisco. Now 54, the former technology entrepreneur and frequent guest on American television believes his private-sector experience could help him work effectively with President Donald Trump on regional diplomacy.

“He was a businessman, not a career politician, same as me,” Bennett told The Times of Israel in June, referring to Trump. “His worldview is, let’s get stuff done. Let’s look at results, not process. And that’s precisely my view.”

Bennett has pledged to pursue new regional deals aggressively, using economic cooperation as a foundation and expanding on the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords. His agenda intersects with Trump’s regional priorities, but the president endorsed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for another term on Oct. 18.

At home, Bennett faces a more complicated political path. His Beyachad, or Together, alliance with former Prime Minister Yair Lapid is trailing both Netanyahu’s Likud and the Yashar party led by former military chief Gadi Eisenkot.

A Channel 12 survey released Oct. 23 gave Eisenkot 23 Knesset seats, compared with 21 for Netanyahu and 15 for the Bennett-Lapid alliance.

Still, Bennett understands that Israel’s parliamentary system does not require a politician to lead the largest party in order to become prime minister. In 2021, he formed a government even though his Yamina party won only seven of the Knesset’s 120 seats, underscoring how coalition talks can determine who takes power.

How a seven-seat leader became prime minister

Bennett was born in Haifa to American immigrants and served in Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal and Maglan military units. He later co-founded the cybersecurity firm Cyota, which was sold in 2005 for $145 million.

His political career began as Netanyahu’s chief of staff. He went on to lead the Yesha Council, which represents West Bank settlements, and held the posts of economy, education and defense minister.

A religious Zionist and longtime critic of Palestinian statehood, Bennett upended Israel’s political order in 2021 by assembling an unlikely coalition of right-wing, centrist, left-wing and Arab parties. The alliance ended Netanyahu’s 12-year run in power.

That government fell apart in 2022, and many of Bennett’s former supporters accused him of abandoning the commitments he had made during the campaign.

Einat Halevy Levin, a strategic adviser who has known Bennett for years, said the former prime minister used his time out of office to prepare for another chance at national leadership.

“In 2021, he wasn’t prepared. He hadn’t built a governing party; he had built another election campaign,” Halevy Levin told News Media.

She said she met Bennett at his home in November 2023, after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, when he had already decided to reenter politics.

This time, Halevy Levin said, Bennett devoted years to creating a political organization, evaluating potential candidates and putting in place the infrastructure required to run a government.

“I’ve known him since he was economy minister. He was always daring and full of creative ideas, but was more inclined to stick to his own views,” she said. “He has undergone a transformation.”

A new Middle East vision meets old divisions

Bennett’s regional ambitions reflect an approach to diplomacy shaped by his business experience, according to Halevy Levin.

She recalled attending a meeting with a senior official from a neighboring country who appeared astonished by Bennett’s detailed knowledge of its economy and priorities.

“He wasn’t looking at the country through a military lens,” she said, describing Bennett’s focus on identifying shared economic interests rather than approaching every regional relationship primarily as a security challenge.

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In an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 on Sunday, two days before the election, Bennett pointed to his meetings as prime minister with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Jordan’s King Abdullah II and UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed as examples of the diplomacy he hopes to revive.

He argued that Israel needs to present a new vision of a Middle Eastern renaissance and identified extremist settler violence in the West Bank as a major source of damage to its international standing.

“We need to eliminate Jewish terrorism in Judea and Samaria, and I say this precisely as a supporter of the settlement movement,” Bennett said. “They do not represent the overwhelming majority of settlers, but right now this is the problem causing us the greatest damage internationally.”

Bennett said he would direct Israel’s senior police, military and intelligence officials to produce a plan within three days to crack down on extremist violence.

His foreign policy, however, remains firmly on the Israeli right.

On Iran, Bennett has promoted his “Octopus Doctrine,” advocating direct action against Tehran rather than focusing exclusively on Iranian-backed groups.

“If Hezbollah fires at us, we strike Iran,” he declared at an Aug. 19 policy conference.

On Gaza, Bennett opposes Palestinian statehood and supports maintaining Israeli security control until Hamas is disarmed. He has also proposed excluding Qatar and Turkey from Gaza’s future arrangements while involving Egypt.

Those positions raise questions about how significantly his government would depart from Netanyahu’s policies.

Danny Citrinowicz, a senior researcher at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies and former head of the Iran branch in Israeli military intelligence, argued that restoring Israel’s diplomatic standing requires more than a change in leadership.

“If Bennett thinks he can support annexing E1 (an area east of Jerusalem where planned Israeli settlement construction could further fragment the West Bank), oppose a Palestinian state, continue the occupation of Gaza and simultaneously meet with Sisi and Abdullah and attract investment to Israel, he simply doesn’t understand the depth of the international crisis,” Citrinowicz said.

Citrinowicz argued that without a fundamental change in Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, replacing Netanyahu would not be sufficient to restore the country’s international standing.

His warning comes amid changing American public attitudes toward Israel. A February 2026 Gallup survey found 36% of Americans sympathized more with Israelis, compared with 41% who sympathized more with Palestinians, a statistically insignificant five-point difference but a significant shift from the long-standing pro-Israel advantage.

A comeback built on lessons from 2021

Beyond foreign policy, Bennett is promising a sweeping domestic overhaul.

In an Oct. 25 manifesto, he pledged to redirect 30 billion shekels in government benefits toward families who work and serve in the military, reduce food prices by 30%, establish a state commission of inquiry into Oct. 7 and introduce an eight-year term limit for prime ministers.

His alliance with Lapid gives him an established political organization, but he faces competition from Eisenkot and continuing attacks from Netanyahu, who has warned that a future opposition coalition could depend on left-wing and Arab parties.

With Israel’s fragmented parliamentary system requiring at least 61 seats to govern, coalition negotiations could prove as consequential as the election results themselves.

Bennett has already demonstrated that political reality once.

Now, four years after his first government collapsed, he is seeking to convince Israelis that the unconventional politician who became prime minister with seven seats has returned better prepared — and with a vision that could reshape Israel’s place in the Middle East.