Bennett appears to confirm 2026 run for PM in tweet bashing Ben Gvir

Former premier Naftali Bennett appears to confirm he will challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the next election. Bennett recently registered a new party under the temporary name “Bennett 2026.”

Dismissing a media report that he said paid “hush money” to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Bennett accuses his political opponents of operating “a machine of lies and poison that will do everything to harm Bennett, because they understand that he is the only one capable of winning and replacing the shameful government and restoring Israel.”

“This time we will not remain silent in the face of fake [news], this time we will fight the machine with all our might, because millions of Israelis are tired of this bullying, the lies, and the violence,” he tweets, promising that “change will come.”

The Kan public broadcaster reported earlier this morning that NIS 35,000 ($9,755) Bennett paid Ben Gvir as part of a defamation settlement was intended to keep Ben Gvir from going public with potentially damning dirt on Bennett.

According to Kan, after suing for defamation over unfounded accusations by Bennett’s wife Gilat, Ben Gvir began publicly claiming to have damaging information about Bennett that could “could tear a family apart. ” A month later, the two sides reached a settlement.

Kan quoted anonymous sources claiming that Bennett has since been less critical of Ben Gvir than he of coalition leaders.

In a lengthy response on X, Bennett replies that “there is not and never has been any hush money,” calling any claim to the contrary a “complete lie.”

“In a mediation process, a compromise was agreed upon that included compensation, and this was implemented. That’s it. No hush money, no blackmail, nothing,” he writes.

“Ben Gvir is a particularly failed minister of national security, who engages in the gimmicks and PR that characterize this government, and therefore during his tenure, murders in Israel (not including the 7/10 massacre) doubled,” Bennett adds.

Ben Gvir also denies the Kan report, stating that “Naftali Bennett never paid me ‘hush money’ — he paid compensation for false slander that his wife Gilat spread against me and against Otzma Yehudit activists (what he usually calls: ‘the poison machine’).”

Adding that he donated the money “to the heroic IDF soldiers,” Ben Gvir accuses Bennett of being “a particularly failed prime minister, who deceived right-wing voters, stole their votes, and with their help established a government with [Ra’am party leader Mansour] Abbas-Hamas, in which he boasted that he allowed workers from Gaza to enter Israeli territory, based on the concept of ‘economic peace in exchange for security peace,’ which blew up in our faces during the October 7 massacre.”