Bennett said to eye ex-general Yadlin for national security adviser job
PM's office said to deny Channel 12 report; Arab affairs analyst reportedly to be appointed senior adviser
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is said to be considering tapping the director of the Institute for National Security Studies as the next chairman of Israel’s National Security Council.
Amos Yadlin, who heads the INSS, is the leading contender to replace Meir Ben-Shabbat as national security adviser, Channel 13 reported on Monday.
Yadlin served as head of the IDF Military Intelligence Unit and was military attaché to Washington. He was the center-left’s Zionist Union’s candidate for defense minister ahead of the 2015 election, and is seen as more moderate than the hawkish Bennett.
However, sources in the Prime Minister’s Office told the Makor Rishon daily that the report was fabricated.
According to a separate report on Monday by Channel 12, Bennett will appoint Arab affairs analyst and Yedioth Ahronoth columnist Shimrit Meir as his adviser for international affairs.
Bennett assumed office on Sunday after an unlikely alliance of right-wing, left-wing, centrist, and Islamist parties bound together to end former Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year rule and prevent the nation from heading to a possible fifth round of elections in two years.
Speaking before the confidence vote in a speech repeatedly interrupted by the new opposition members, Bennett presented his new “reasonable and responsible” government, pledging that it would “end a terrible period of hatred among the people of Israel.”