Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reported plan to appoint religious right-wing politician Naftali Bennett as defense minister is being met with political hurdles, but Bennett is not deterred. He had indeed lost his once significant political power by this year’s two elections, but he keeps airing out his ministerial suit in the hopes of getting the post of which he has long dreamed.

The first harbinger of a rapprochement between the two men since Netanyahu fired Bennett in June from his position as education minister was an embarrassing Oct. 19 post by the chair of the New Right party, attacking Israel’s law enforcement authorities for going after Netanyahu. Netanyahu, he wrote in reference to the pending indictments against him, received “way too many cigars and champagne. That is indeed not okay, but not something over which to topple a prime minister.”

Following the Nov. 1 rocket barrage from the Gaza Strip on the southern town of Sderot, Bennett appears to have reversed his position, perhaps in order to prove himself worthy of the defense minister’s job. “… I am not in favor of a stronger or weaker response right now. There is no point in a somewhat stronger response as my friends on the right propose, because this would lead to another unnecessary mini-round of violence,” Bennett tweeted Nov. 3.

Strange. As a longtime member of the security Cabinet under Netanyahu, Bennett had no qualms about criticizing the prime minister, who currently also holds the defense minister’s post, and his predecessor Yisrael Beitenu leader Avigdor Liberman for their ineffectual policy on Gaza. For example, after weekslong tensions on the Gaza border, Bennett blasted Liberman at the end of September 2018. “In recent days, we have witnessed the dangerous results of Liberman's policy of restraint and his weakness regarding the Gaza Strip. More restraint equals more terror,” he said. "That's not how you manage a security policy, that's what a failed security policy looks like."