Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home Party, recently decided to withdraw his bid for either the defense or foreign ministry in Benjamin Netanyahu’s soon-to-be-formed government, and is instead asking for the post of education minister. The shift, writes Haviv Rettig Gur, signifies a strategic retreat for Bennett, who has worked to expand the appeal of his party beyond its traditional base:
Polling as high as sixteen seats just a couple of months ago, Jewish Home under Bennett seemed headed to unprecedented success, and Bennett talked explicitly about its eventually becoming Israel’s ruling party. Key to this surge, and to Bennett’s influence, was the dramatic change he tried to lead within the party itself, branching out of the narrow confines of the ideological West Bank settler community and the religious-Zionist fold. [In the event, however, the party ended up] with just eight seats in the new Knesset.
Like many sectoral Israeli parties, . . . Jewish Home is not just a political party. For its base, it serves as an expression and symbol of religious and communal identity. While its overarching ideology is anything but sectoral, seeking the “redemption” of the land, nation, and even the spiritual world of the Jews, it has succumbed to the same social segmentation that has come to define Israeli religious and political identity. Religious Zionists refer to themselves as a migzar, a “sector” or “camp” distinct from the mainstream, from secular Israelis, or from the ultra-Orthodox. . . .
Education was a traditional bastion of the religious-Zionist camp, a source of influence from which the idealistic “sector” could bring its religious and political program to larger audiences. . . . Bennett has spent the past two weeks speaking to his own camp to gauge the sentiments of his constituents. What he heard . . . was that it was time for religious Zionism’s ambitious, tech-savvy young leader to return to the party’s traditional priorities: the sacred tasks of education and settlement.
Read more on Times of Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com/bennetts-retreat-shows-narrowing-horizons-for-religious-zionist-base/