Two years ago, Naftali Bennett and his party missed entry into the Knesset, and now he is Israel's thirteenth prime minister with five percent of the vote in the general election and only the approval of sixty of the 120 Knesset MPs.
He replaces Benjamin Netanyahu, who, with a total of 15 years in office, was the longest-serving prime minister and with whom Bennett was closely associated until not so long ago.
Jochen Stahnke
Political correspondent for Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan based in Tel Aviv.
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Blasphemers claim that Bennett is a more casual head of government. Bennett, who takes office at the age of 49, leads the splinter party Jamina ("To the right"), which is one of a total of at least four different parties that Bennett has already belonged to in his political career. And even before this government was formed, Bennett negotiated with both sides.
Change and new beginnings are part of his life.
When he was three, Bennett's California parents moved their children from Haifa to Canada, and later Bennett grew up in New York.
He graduated from school again in Haifa and spent his military service in a special unit.
He then studied law and economics in Jerusalem.
Bennett then moved back to New York for a few years, where he helped build a cybersecurity company, which he and his partners quickly sold for $ 145 million.
Bennett was in his mid-thirties and had achieved everything professionally.
Associated with the right
His decision to go into politics is said to have fallen through the 2006 Lebanon War, which was seen as a failure and in which he participated as a reservist. Bennett has been ideologically linked to the right in Israel from a young age. As a teenager he belonged to the youth movement of a party to the right of the Likud, which fought against any abandonment of occupied territories. To this day, Bennett advocates the annexation of occupied territories and promises that there will never be a Palestinian state. "Negotiations have only led to terror."
After the Lebanon War he joined the staff of the then opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office manager he became that same year. He only stayed there for barely two years when he fell out with the other members of the staff and especially with Netanyahu's complicated wife Sarah. He then became chairman of the Yesha Settlers Council, which represents the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
In 2013 Bennett and his political partner and later Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, with whom he had worked for Netanyahu, then headed the old National Religious Party, which primarily represented the interests of the settlers. Even then, Bennett had advertised the annexation of occupied areas in the West Bank. Bennett and his secular wife Gilat lived in a settlement for only a few months and prefer to live in a sophisticated residential area in the Tel Aviv suburb of Raanana, the home of many high-tech millionaires, where the Bennetts and their four children want to stay for the time being . But Bennett found a political loophole with this Settler Party, which he sought to fill. He was quickly elected chairman and remained so for six years.Bennett then founded new splinter parties out of this milieu, which often tipped the scales in forming a government. Under Netanyahu, Bennett was defense, education, and economics minister.
On the one hand, Bennett will now be the first prime minister in Israeli history to wear a kippah in office.
On the other hand, there are different representations of how important religion actually is for Bennett in politics.
In any case, it is not yet known that, like some other members of his party, he is more likely to listen to the rabbis' recommendations.
Lapid and Bennett get along
Bennett has also been cooperating with the central politician Jair Lapid, who has played a key role in setting up Israel's newly sworn eight-party coalition, since 2013.
Politically, the secular and liberal Tel Aviv Lapid and the right-wing Bennett are divided by a lot, but personally the two are on friendly terms.
Both wanted to see Netanyahu go.
Lapid is said to be far more popular than Bennett among the leaders of the other parties.
But he had to make Bennett join a coalition that included left-wing liberal parties and an Islamist list, in order to be able to form a government at all. "Without him we wouldn't be sitting here," he thanked Lapid in his introductory speech. In the election campaign, however, Bennett had promised not to form a coalition with Lapid. Bennett will now formally become head of government in a rotation arrangement until 2023, after which Lapid will replace him for the remaining two years of the legislative period. This is what the coalition agreement says. Few expect the government to last that long. But Bennett could then get slightly more seats than before with his office bonus in the next election.