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EASTORA REPORT | “I haven’t changed my positions. Reality has changed.”
Naftali Bennett used that line in an interview with Israel’s Channel 13 to explain a campaign platform that leaves little room for compromise: Hamas must be eliminated, Qatar should be declared an enemy state and no Israeli-controlled territory should be handed to the Palestinians.
The former prime minister began with Gaza, directly challenging Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach.
“I reject Netanyahu’s current doctrine of living with Hamas,” Bennett said. “We must not live with Hamas. We must eliminate Hamas.”
Bennett argues that Hamas cannot be dismantled while Qatar retains a role in Gaza. He accuses Doha of supporting the group and says one of his first moves if he returns to power would be to formally designate Qatar an enemy state.
He has proposed replacing Qatari influence with a larger Egyptian role, backed by diplomatic and economic pressure on Hamas and military force if those measures fail.
The position puts Bennett to the right of Netanyahu on one of the election’s central security questions. While the current government has continued dealing indirectly with Qatar because of its role in Gaza negotiations, Bennett argues that the relationship itself has become part of the problem.
His position on the Palestinians is just as categorical.
“I will not hand over a single centimeter of land from this country to the Palestinians,” he said.
Bennett has long opposed Palestinian statehood and supports continued Israeli control of strategic areas of the West Bank. What he is presenting now is not a break with those views, but a more forceful application of them after October 7 and the Gaza war.
That is the choice Bennett is trying to put before Israeli voters: not a softer alternative to Netanyahu, but a government that would go further against Hamas, Qatar and Palestinian territorial demands.