In the past few weeks, the Israeli public appears to have gotten used to the strange reality of Naftali Bennett being prime minister. In his first few months in office, people looked suspiciously at the man who, thanks to a shady political move, managed to become prime minister with only six mandates, and weren't convinced the job wasn't too much for him.
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But in the last few weeks, we've suddenly gotten a different Naftali. He shrewdly took advantage of the war in Ukraine, making himself a mediator, and began positioning himself – or so it seemed – as a statesman who was able to play with the big boys.
The prime minister devoted hours to mediating talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, including flying to Moscow one Saturday, and then going on to a meeting with the chancellor of Germany. At the beginning, we counted the conversations he was holding with world leaders, but at a certain point, it became an almost daily occurrence.
In the past few weeks, when the latest wave of terrorism started, there were days when Bennett was almost entirely out of the public's sight. It took him a few days to collect himself, and recover from his COVID isolation, and then he grabbed the reins.
Since then, there's been a sense that he hasn't stopped having his picture taken (without fuss) – pictures with the IDF chief, the head of the Shin Bet security agency and his staff, at a public briefing, and while visiting people wounded in the attacks at hospitals.
But while Bennett was dealing with the big issues, he took his eye off the ball. He forgot to make sure he wasn't abandoning any of gang who were hurt by the fallout. The man who came up through special military units knows how important it is to collect intelligence, and he also knows that the quality of a force depends on every last soldier. Even more so when we're talking about a 61-member coalition.
By Israeli standards, Bennett is a political newbie. Fewer than 10 years have passed since he burst out on the scene, a decade in which he has set out on various and sundry political adventures, some of which succeeded and some of which were crashing failures (such as the New Right in the first 2019 election). But after all of them were over, he found himself in the prime minister's seat.
Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was also something of a newcomer in his first time as prime minister, and also slowly lost his people – from David Levy to Itzik Mordechai. When he came back, he realized how important it is to maintain the coalition and the party politically. While leading the country, he never neglected what was happening in the Likud. He stayed in power for 12 years, more than any of his predecessors.
Naftali Bennett learned today that it's nice to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv, and take pictures with IDF combat troops, but sometimes he needs to work just as hard to make peace between MK Idit Silman and Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz.
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