Who is israels prime minister

But he will be severely constrained by his unwieldy coalition, which has only a narrow majority in parliament and includes parties from the right, left and center. He is opposed to Palestinian independence and strongly supports Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians and much of the international community see as a major obstacle to peace.

Bennett fiercely criticized Mr. Netanyahu after the former prime minister agreed to slow settlement construction under pressure from then-President Obama, who tried and failed to revive the peace process early in his first term. He later served as Cabinet minister of diaspora affairs, education and defense in various Netanyahu-led governments.

Bennett for decades and served with him in the military. He expects Mr. Netanyahu and the right-wingers among the new coalition all championed policies that intentionally blurred the distinction between Israel and the West Bank.

Bureaucratic inertia and existing legal arrangements all create a strategy by default, whether the cabinet has a plan or not. Now Netanyahu leaves office at a time when normalization has resumed without movement on the Palestinian issue. But this is also a time when many abroad view the two-state solution as an anachronistic platitude and therefore return with a vengeance to the question of what Israel wants to be. Some have their own answers. The Biden administration, with a huge domestic and foreign agenda to think about, might also prefer if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict went to sleep for about four years, just like Bennett and Lapid.

And yet, just like Israel, the administration has already been pulled back into conflict management, if not conflict resolution. Bennett heads a very small party, and he earned the top post first simply because he was the hardest to peel off from the Netanyahu camp.

He thinks of himself — and hopes to be perceived abroad — as someone driven by common sense, ready to listen. In joining this coalition, Bennett has lost his base in the right wing, leaving him only one path: forward. He must at least appear to succeed as prime minister, or all will have been for naught. Biden will find in Bennett someone eager for a fresh start. Capitalizing on this, Washington would do well to see what practical steps it could advance — in the West Bank, and perhaps even on Gaza — with Bennett and Lapid.

Biden will not, however, find any more clarity than Lyndon B. Johnson: The question of what kind of Israel does Israel itself want will remain as vague as it was in , and even more important today. What comes next?

Order from Chaos. A how-to guide for managing the end of the post-Cold War era. Bennett has recently called for the annexation of occupied West Bank. Bennett worked for Netanyahu as a senior aide between and After he entered politics, Bennett aligned himself with the rightwing national religious Jewish Home party, and entered Parliament as its representative in Bennett is known for being a strong advocate of the Jewish nation state, and for insisting on Jewish historical and religious claims to the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, territory near the Israel-Syria border that Israel has occupied since the war.

Once the head of the Yesha Council, a political group that represents Jewish settlers, Bennett has been a long-standing advocate of rights of Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

He has, however, never advocated Israeli claims on Gaza.