Bennett: ‘We’re in a state of national emergency. Israel must form a government’

Of central concern to Bennett is the impact the political situation is having on Israeli preparedness to confront Iranian aggression. 

By World Israel News Staff

“Everything is shut down,” New Right party chairman Naftali Bennett said on Israel’s Channel 12’s Meet the Press program on Saturday evening.

“We need to establish a government. We have 1,200 classes that aren’t built at the moment because the money stopped flowing,” said the former education minister.

Of central concern to Bennett is the impact the political situation is having on Israeli preparedness to confront Iranian aggression. Insisting it was an Iranian initiative that led to the recent rocket strikes from Gaza over the weekend (according to reports, Iranian proxy Islamic Jihad was behind the rockets), Bennett said Iran wants to create a “ring of strangulation” around Israel.

“Iran’s national mission at the moment is to surround the State of Israel from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq and Gaza with hundreds of thousands of rockets and precision missiles in order to strangle us,” he said.

He said the combination of U.S. withdrawal from Syria, depriving the area of a “regional policeman,” and the shutdown in Israel due to the domestic political situation sends a message of weakness on which the Iranians are capitalizing.

“I would say we’re in an event of national emergency,” he said.

“I am ready to do anything to help [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Blue and White leader Benny] Gantz establish a national emergency government,” Bennett said. “If I am a barrier to forming a government, I release Netanyahu from any commitment to me. The main thing is that a government will emerge.”

Regarding rumors that Netanyahu is considering appointing him defense minister, Bennett said he hadn’t heard from any official source about it and only read the reports on Saturday evening.

He said he would weigh any such offer. However, he stressed that forming a government was the important thing, even if “only for two years.”

“We must not go to a third election,” he said, adding “If we don’t establish a government in the two weeks remaining to Gantz, in my opinion it’s elections.”