Bennett jabs at Netanyahu over settlements

Jewish Home party head Naftali Bennett took a rare pre-election swipe at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud party Thursday, accusing his closest allies in the Israeli political arena of not keeping their word on support for West Bank settlements.

“Before the elections everyone is right-wing, they travel to Judea and Samaria, but after the elections they implement freezes or give speeches about a Palestinian state in an address at Bar-Ilan,” Bennett said, referencing Netanyahu’s stated support for a Palestinian state in 2009 and a construction moratorium in the West Bank implemented the following year.

Bennett, who made the comments during a visit to the Blich High School in Ramat Gan, also spoke of his concerns that Netanyahu would try to form a coalition with other partners before turning to the Jewish Home.

“I have a feeling that also this time I will wait for a phone call from Netanyahu like I am waiting for a date,” he said.

The minister recalled the period after the 2013 parliamentary elections when Netanyahu appeared to dally before inviting the Jewish Home, with its 12 seats, to join the coalition, while tasking Tzipi Livni, as leader of Hatnua that won just six seats, to direct negotiations with the Palestinians.

“There is feeling that what happened last time will happen again, when he let Tzipi Livni with her six mandates direct the negotiations,” he said.

The Blich High School is known for holding mock elections that often accurately predict actual results, making it a popular stump spot for candidates, though most students are too young to vote.

Bennett’s comments came a day after Netanyahu visited a pre-military academy at the Eli settlement in the northern West Bank, where he warned against a scenario in which the left-wing parties are given a chance to form a government.

Earlier in the month, Netanyahu tweeted on his official Twitter social media page that the Jewish Home will be part of a “wide Likud government” that he plans to form after the elections.

Bennett and Netanyahu have largely avoided attacking each other in the political bickering between politicians in the run up to the elections, but last month Bennett strongly criticized Netanyahu over his handling of the conflict in the Gaza Strip fought by the IDF against Hamas during the summer of 2014.

At the time Bennett was responding to a viral video put out by Likud that showed Netanyahu in the role of a kindergarten teacher, and the politicians of his outgoing cabinet, some of whom now aim to unseat him, as unruly children.

“We will not succeed in doing anything if you keep on fighting,” Netanyahu was seen telling the children politicians in the video.

A child playing Bennett appeared in the clip, along with kids who portrayed other rivals of Netanyahu, apparently in violation of a reported agreement between Likud and Jewish Home, the two largest right-wing parties, to avoid negative campaigning.

In an interview with Army Radio, Bennett insisted that despite Netanyahu’s jibe, he would not “fire his gun inside the tank,” a Hebrew-language idiom sometimes used by Bennett, a former IDF officer, to signify his principle of avoiding infighting and negative campaigning among parties of the right.

Still, he went on to issue fierce, if subtle, criticism of the prime minister, taking a swipe at Netanyahu’s management of the war in Gaza, dubbed Operation Protective Edge by Israel.

“At least this child won’t allow rockets to land near the airport,” he said, alluding to rocket fire from the Gaza Strip during the war that prompted several international airlines to cancel flights to Israel — a nightmare scenario often cited by right-wing politicians as an argument against a Palestinian state.

Jonathan Beck contributed to this report.