Ex-PM Bennett says he wouldn’t include Arab parties, only Zionists, in next government
Politician, whose 2021-2022 coalition included an Islamist faction, tells private audience in US that given makeup of Arab parties, it ‘wouldn’t make sense’ to include them now
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett told a private audience of US students on Tuesday that, should it be relevant after his planned return to politics soon, the next government he would lead would not include Arab parties, as his previous government did, saying this is a time for Zionist parties to lead Israel.
“We can set up a coalition including 90 [out of 120 total] Knesset members, a very broad coalition, that will put Israel on the right track again, but to do that they must be Zionists, and that means the next government won’t include Arab parties,” the right-wing politician told students at Columbia University in New York.
Bennett emphasized that any such government must nevertheless take care of Arab Israelis, given that they are citizens with equal rights.
But, he said, “because of the war that’s going on right now, and because of the composition of the Arab parties, it doesn’t make sense for them to join the government.”
Two students who were present at the meeting confirmed to The Times of Israel that Bennett had made the remarks, which were reported earlier by the Haaretz daily.
It was not clear from Bennett’s comments whether he would be willing to include non-Zionist, ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties in such a coalition. The current government is reliant on one such party, United Torah Judaism.
The Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government, which was in office from 2021 to 2022, made history by including the Islamist Ra’am party, led by Mansour Abbas, in its diverse coalition of right-wing, centrist and left-wing parties.
The coalition marked the first interruption of Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership since 2009, and many in the right wing staunchly opposed the move and pressured members of Bennett’s Yamina party to leave it. They succeeded after a year, when party MKs toppled the government, triggering elections that returned Netanyahu to office.
Bennett is seen as highly likely to return to politics ahead of the next election, and many recent opinion polls have predicted a strong showing. A Channel 12 survey released on Wednesday found that if elections were held now, with Bennett running, the former prime minister could assemble a 62-seat ruling coalition without having to rely on Ra’am or any factions in the pro-Netanyahu bloc.
The survey also included several head-to-head matchups between Netanyahu and his political rivals on who is better suited to be prime minister, with Bennett the only one to outpoll the premier at 36 percent of respondents to Netanyahu’s 34%.
200 protesters demonstrate against Bennett’s talk
Bennett made his comments Tuesday during a private engagement with a handful of Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia University, which has been a hotbed of anti-Israel activism in the 17 months since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught that sparked the war in Gaza.
The event was never publicized, but the plan for Bennett’s appearance was leaked, drawing more than 200 protesters to the campus.
In the meeting, Bennett also criticized Netanyahu, denouncing the premier for his years-long policy of facilitating Qatari payments to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, and said that he had ordered the payments stopped when he was prime minister.
He told students that his Iran policy would be to “bomb the heck out of their nuclear program,” according to a student who was present at the event.
Bennett also panned the current government’s efforts to overhaul the judiciary, saying the division caused by the highly controversial campaign had distracted the country from its national security challenges, making it look weak and leaving it vulnerable to Hamas’s October 7 invasion.
The former premier also told students that Israel never targets civilians and responded to charges, vociferously rejected by Israel, that the Jewish state has committed “genocide” against Palestinians, calling Hamas’s means of warfare — intentionally embedding within a civilian population — “self-genocide.”
In addition, Bennett said the hostage-ceasefire deal agreed to in January would not have happened without US President Donald Trump. Asked about the American leader’s call to turn Gaza into a “Riviera” of the Middle East while forcibly resettling its residents, Bennett said: “I’ll say this, it’s time for fresh, new ideas.”
