Bennett's positions have been described as "
ultra-nationalist", and Bennett describes himself, and has been described, He had also been labeled as a
far-right politician, a "pragmatist" and an "opportunist". He opposes the existence of a
Palestinian state, and supports cutting taxes. Since his term as a member of the
Thirty-sixth government of Israel in 2021, he has become increasingly more critical of
Likud and
Benjamin Netanyahu because of
democratic backsliding in Israel and
incompetency in handling Israel's Gaza War. However, some within the
Israeli opposition have criticized Bennett for not fully abandoning all of his right-wing positions, including his support for
annexing Area C of the
West Bank and leaving
Areas A and
B under an "ill-defined
autonomy regime."
Israeli–Palestinian conflict In February 2012, Bennett published a plan to manage the
Israeli–Palestinian conflict called "The Israel Stability Initiative." Finally, Israel would invest in creating roads so Palestinians could travel between Areas A and B without checkpoints, and invest in infrastructure and joint industrial zones, because "[p]eace grows from below – through people, and people in daily life." Bennett also resisted immigration of Palestinian refugees now living outside the West Bank, or the connection between the
Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In 2011, he stated that there were about 50 factories in the West Bank industrial region where Israelis and Palestinians work together and cited this as one workable approach to finding peace between the two sides. In June 2013, Bennett suggested that Israel must learn to live with the Palestinian problem without a "surgical action" of separation to two states: "I have a friend who's got shrapnel in his rear end, and he's been told that it can be removed surgically, but it would leave him disabled ... . So he decided to live with it. There are situations where insisting on perfection can lead to more trouble than it's worth." Bennett's "Shrapnel in the butt" quickly became widely known as representing his view of the Palestinian problem. In response to
Israel's release of Palestinian prisoners in 2013, Bennett said that Palestinian terrorists should be shot, allegedly adding: "I already killed lots of Arabs in my life, and there is absolutely no problem with that." Bennett was widely condemned for these words, although he denied saying them, claiming he said merely that "terrorists should be killed if they pose an immediate life threat to our soldiers when in action." In January 2013, Bennett said: "There is not going to be a Palestinian state within the tiny land of Israel [referring to the area from the
Jordan River to the
Mediterranean Sea]. It's just not going to happen. A Palestinian state would be a disaster for the next 200 years." In December 2014, a group of academics who opposed the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and members of
The Third Narrative, a
Labor Zionist organization, called on the U.S. and E.U. to impose sanctions on Bennett and three other Israelis "who lead efforts to insure permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank and to annex all or parts of it unilaterally in violation of international law." The academics, who called themselves Scholars for Israel and Palestine (SIP) and claimed to be "pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, pro-peace", asked the U.S. and EU to freeze Bennett's foreign assets and impose visa restrictions. Bennett was chosen as a target for proposed sanctions because of his work in opposing the 2010 settlement freeze while he was director of the
Yesha Council, actively supporting annexation of over 60% of the West Bank, and "pressing strongly for a policy of creeping annexation." In October 2016, Bennett said, "On the matter of the Land of Israel, we have to move from holding action to a decision. We have to mark the dream, and the dream is that Judea and Samaria will be part of the sovereign State of Israel. We have to act today, and we must give our lives. We can't keep marking the Land of Israel as a tactical target and a Palestinian state as the strategic target." In November 2016, Bennett said that the election of
Donald Trump as
President of the United States gave him hope that the two-state solution would no longer be considered viable, claiming: "The era of the Palestinian state is over." According to Israeli journalist
Anshel Pfeffer, those who have worked with Bennett have privately said that much of his rhetoric is for electioneering purposes, and he is in fact more moderate than believed. Despite his expressed right-wing views against a Palestinian state, while engaged in coalition negotiations for a unity government with
Yair Lapid and other party leaders following the
2021 Knesset election, during which he was offered the prime ministership, Bennett agreed to a policy of not annexing any territory in the West Bank and to not build any new settlements while being prime minister in a potential unity government. In October 2023, during the Gaza war, he expressed support for Israel's total blockade of the Gaza Strip, saying "I'm not going to feed electricity to my enemies." In the interview with U.K.-based Sky News, Bennett was asked: "What about those Palestinians who are in hospital on life support and babies in incubators that will have to be turned off because Israelis have cut the power to Gaza?" Bennett replied: "Are you seriously keep on asking me about Palestinian civilians? What's wrong with you? Have you not seen what's happened? We're fighting Nazis.... When the U.K., Great Britain, was fighting the Nazis during World War II, no one asked what's going on in Dresden." Following the beginning of the
Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, Bennett advised against a direct
ground invasion and occupation of major cities, but rather for Israel to create buffer zones and conduct sporadic ground raids against isolated pockets of Hamas militants. He believes that this is the best plan that would drain Hamas's resources while it protects Gazan civilians and prevents the collapse of the
Israeli economy.
Economy and society , and
Ofra Strauss at the Jasmine businesswomen's convention for promotion of
small and medium-sized enterprises, Israel, 15 December 2014 Bennett believes in less government regulation of the private sector and that private businesses are the engine of economic growth. He favors social support of vulnerable populations such as the elderly and disabled. Bennett has said Israel needs to break the monopoly of the tycoons, the major labor unions, and the
Ministry of Defense, which in his opinion are strangling
Israel's economy. He believes the key to reducing disparities is equality of opportunity and investment in
education in the periphery, to give tools to populations of weaker economic backgrounds. By doing so, Bennett believes weaker populations in Israel will be given the opportunity to succeed professionally and financially. He supports the provision of land to veterans in the periphery, in the
Negev, and the
Galilee, to promote a national solution to the problem of "affordable housing" and a more equitable distribution of the
population in Israel. He has also pledged to remove heavy bureaucratic challenges to small and medium-sized Israeli businesses. As Economy Minister, Bennett oversaw a new strategy by Israel to increase trade with
emerging markets around the world and reduce trade with the
European Union, so as to diversify its foreign trade. The two main reasons for this shift are to take advantage of opportunities in emerging markets and to avert the threat of possible EU sanctions on Israel over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Bennett acknowledged that he was seeking to reduce Israel's economic dependence on the EU to reduce its influence on Israel. According to the
Financial Times, Bennett is the primary architect of this economic pivot. Under his leadership, the Economy Ministry began opening new trade attaché offices in
Asia,
Africa, and
South America, and also began closing some trade offices in Europe and consolidating others with offices in neighboring countries. As part of this process, Bennett opened negotiations with
Russia and
China on free trade agreements, oversaw continuing negotiations with
India for a free trade agreement, and led economic delegations to China and India. While attending the
World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 2013 in
Bali,
Indonesia, Bennett held talks with delegations from some unspecified countries on the possibility of future free trade agreements. Bennett implemented reforms to lower Israel's high
food prices. Under his oversight, import duties and barriers were reduced, and mechanisms were set up to ensure more competition in the Israeli food industry. These reforms have been credited with a decline in Israeli food prices that began in April 2014 and continued throughout the rest of the year and into 2015. According to a
Haaretz editorial, a fall in global commodity prices and dire financial straits among many Israeli consumers prompted the decline, not the reforms. Bennett has led a push to integrate
Haredi men, many of whom are unemployed, into the workforce. According to Bennett, their integration into the workforce will greatly bolster economic growth. Under his "voucher plan", the
Ministry of the Economy issues vouchers for hundreds of vocational schools that will allow Haredi men to avoid
mandatory military service, at least temporarily, in exchange for enrolling in a vocational school to learn a trade. Bennett also wants to increase employment rate among
Israeli-Arab women. In October 2021, Bennett's administration approved plans to spend billions of dollars to improve conditions for Israel's Arab minority. Following
the murder of a 16-year-old girl at the
Jerusalem gay pride parade in 2015, Bennett, who was Education Minister at the time, instructed the Education Ministry to prepare programs to prevent future attacks on the LGBTQ community, saying: "We are responding to this attack with actions and not just talk." While Bennett has voiced support for LGBTQ rights, saying "they deserve all of the civil rights", he stated in late 2020 that he had no plans to push for policy changes to help LGBTQ people. ==Personal life==