Even centre stage at the UN, can Bennett ever escape shadow of  you-know-who?

The annual opening of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) each September is an easily derided talking shop for the world’s high and mighty, who file in one after the next to deliver humdrum speeches and then meet each other for short “bi-lats” in drab conference rooms. In recent years, many of the more consequential world leaders have increasingly given it a miss and sent a recorded video instead. Last year, due to the pandemic, the whole event was held virtually, and somehow the world continued revolving.

Some leaders however, like Israel’s previous prime minister, made a point of coming to New York and making their speech personally, each year. And for new leaders, like Israel’s current prime minister, a first UNGA is a rite of passage. So despite the awkward timing during Sukkot, Naftali Bennett flew on Saturday night to give his maiden UN speech.

Few places are as synonymous in the minds of Israelis with Benjamin Netanyahu as that famous wide wooden podium with the golden UN crest. Not only had he appeared there so many times as prime minister, using various visual aids as his signature moves, but it was also the place where he first won public recognition as Israel’s youthful and eloquent ambassador to the UN. Five days before Mr Bennett’s first appearance there, his spokesperson was already busy briefing the media that this time it would be different. Without mentioning Mr Netanyahu by name, he promised that the new PM “will speak at the UN without placards and cartoons”, and “the message will not be warnings and alarms, but a simple statement”.

The Bennett team was aware that their boss could never hope to rival his silver-tongued predecessor in the rhetoric stakes, so they were trying to make a virtue out of lowered expectations. Which is fine as a media-management tactic, but it highlights a major problem that is bedeviling Naftali Bennett, who last week marked 100 days in office. The only narrative to his premiership so far is that he is not-Netanyahu.

Being not-Netanyahu is not an insignificant achievement for a prime minister who replaced Israel’s longest-serving leader, a man who dominated, many would say toxified, the political scene for so long. But it is not enough, and Mr Bennett is running the risk that being non-Netanyahu is what will define his entire term in office.

Most leaders shouldn’t have to start worrying about their legacy in the first 100 days of their term. They will probably have ample time to define it. But Mr Bennett’s case is rather different.

Under the terms of the coalition agreement, his term will last at most two-years-and-a-bit. Once that it is over, he has very little prospect of returning to office.

The combination of circumstances which allowed him to become prime minister with a party of just six Knesset members is not going to repeat itself.

Previous prime ministers who came to power as part of a term-sharing “rotation” deal were leaders of Likud and Labour and intended to (and did) win further terms. Mr Bennett, if he’s realistic, has to know that as leader of a tiny party with no real institutional infrastructure, and many of whose voters are already infuriated at him for forming a government with left-wing and Arab parties, he is extremely unlikely to ever serve again as prime minister.

His 26 months in office, before he hands the keys over to Yair Lapid in August 2023, is all he’s going to get. He got 800 days as prime minister and he’s already used up 13 per cent, or one eighth of them.

If he wants to even have a legacy, he has to act fast. Wasting four days to fly to the UN and make a speech isn’t the best use of his time. Especially as the main feature of the speech was that it was a non-Netanyahu performance.

Perhaps it’s unfair to expect that a prime minister who came to office having to deal with such massive crises as a global pandemic and Iran on the threshold of a military nuclear capability can even think of legacy-defining moves. Especially when this prime minister not only knows just how limited his time in power is going to be, but also how limited that power is. Mr Bennett is very barely the first among equals in his cabinet.

The coalition agreement doesn’t even allow him to fire ministers who are not members of his own party (and he can’t fire his Yamina ministers because he won’t have much of a party left if he does so). His colleagues, the other party leaders, control wide swathes of government policy, over which he has to tread with great caution.

In private conversations, the prime minister seems to have the glimmerings of a plan. He wants to take advantage of the unique circumstances of his government. Instead of allowing its unwieldy ideological structure to hamstring it, he hopes that he can use that to the government’s advantage.

A coalition with right-wing, centrist, left-wing and Arab parties won’t be able to do anything on Israel’s core issues of identity or about the century-long conflict with the Palestinians.

That doesn’t mean it can’t effect some serious change. The Bennett government could not have come into being without the desire of such a wide array of political forces to replace Mr Netanyahu. Having done so, they have an opportunity to do away with Netanyahu-style divide-and-rule politics as well.

Perhaps the best opportunity for doing so is by facing the tragic rise of the murder rate in the Arab-Israeli sector, with more than 90 deaths so far this year. This isn’t the first time there’s been a major wave of violent crime among Arab-Israelis of course, but in the past governments could allow themselves to largely ignore them as there were no Arab parties in the coalition and it had next-to-no political impact.

This government, however, cannot afford to do nothing. It is reliant on Ra’am and the Islamist party’s four Knesset members, and they will not remain in the coalition without serious action. Their own constituents are demanding it.

And simply deploying more police officers to the Arab towns won’t be enough to tackle this crime wave. It will take a much more comprehensive attitude towards the myriad challenges facing the Arab communities which make up nearly a quarater of Israel’s population: in education, employment, infrastructure and basically every component of civilian life in which Arab-Israelis have been discriminated against for so long.

It’s a mammoth task which won’t be completed in just a couple of years, but it’s a project that this  government, thanks to its components, can certainly lay the groundwork for.

It’s not the stuff of United Nations speeches, and it’s not the kind of legacy a life-long nationalist like Naftali Bennett thought he would have when he dreamt of becoming prime minister.

But it’s probably his best chance of achieving one.

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Even centre stage at the UN, can Bennett ever escape shadow of you-know-who?