Bennett-Shikli Confrontation: Heated 2021 Meeting Revealed

Minister Amichai Shikli, who placed ninth in Likud's recent primary elections, has responded publicly to former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's recent television interview in which Bennett referenced a private conversation between the two men before the 2021 formation of Israel's change government.

Shikli began by criticizing Bennett for disclosing the contents of what he considered a confidential discussion. "I have a principle I try very hard to maintain: a private conversation, whether it's personal text messages on a phone or certainly face-to-face, remains private," Shikli wrote. "In my view, this is the ABC of trust between people in general, and in politics in particular."

In his Channel 12 interview, Bennett had described how "Shikli sat here in the dining room and said, 'I commit that whatever happens, if at some stage I feel my conscience doesn't allow it, I'll go home, because I know I entered the Knesset thanks to you, nobody knows me.'" Bennett was referring to Shikli's subsequent departure to join Likud.

Shikli responded by saying he would not have considered detailing what occurred in their meeting, but since Bennett chose to open the subject, he would set the record straight. "Yes, the meeting took place. That's where Bennett's truth-telling ends, as usual," Shikli stated. He specified that the date was May 5, 2021, the eve of his public letter opposing formation of what he called "the fraud government", a letter published when the mandate to form a government passed to Yair Lapid.

According to Shikli's account, the meeting unfolded in two distinct phases. "The first stage was warm and friendly, a conversation conducted calmly, and at its conclusion Bennett promised me he had no intention of forming a left-wing government, but rather a broad national government, and that there was still time to maneuver," he recounted.

Shikli said he left the meeting with cautious optimism and drove north. Then, near the Arab-Israeli town of Baqa al-Gharbiyye, Bennett asked him to return to Raanana. "I exited at the Iron interchange and retraced my steps for the second part of the meeting, which was conducted on completely different frequencies," Shikli wrote. "Bennett lost control, raged, nearly cried: How dare I not return the mandate to him."

The minister explained his position at the time: "I told him the mandate belongs to the voters. It's not our private property, not even the party chairman's property, an expression of my position that was also published in the media the next day. He demanded I resign if he couldn't form a national government, and I told him not to count on it, and he lost control. It was a heartbreaking spectacle. That was the meeting."

Shikli described what followed in subsequent days: "Events continued in the mixed cities, especially Lod, while Hamas fired rocket barrages toward the Gaza envelope and Jerusalem. In response to the severe escalation, Bennett briefed his associate, journalist Yair Sharki, that in light of the security situation, a coalition with Ra'am [the Islamist Arab party] was off the table. This message was conveyed to me as well in a phone conversation."

Shikli concluded with sharp accusations: "He demanded from me again and again (everything is documented) to attack Netanyahu frontally on Twitter, supposedly to pressure him to form a right-wing government. He demanded I not give interviews to media outlets and requested another meeting, but by that stage I had been called up for reserve duty. On May 27, Amit Segal reported that Lapid and Bennett had agreed to form a government. All the noise was only meant to silence criticism against him."

"I wrote to him: 'You lied to me brazenly,'" Shikli stated. "I've met frauds and swindlers in my life, even recently, but none of them comes close to Bennett, who is a pariah of Israeli politics. And by the way, his betrayal of his voters is the least of his problems in life."