PLAYING HOOKY Naftali Bennett played hooky at a cabinet meeting to cozy up to Donald Trump’s Middle East advisors. What’s his game plan? (Photos: AFP/Imagebank)

B inyamin Netanyahu knew something was awry when he stared at an empty seat at his weekly Sunday morning cabinet meeting.

His education minister Naftali Bennett had taken an unexcused absence to fly to New York for what he hoped would be an impromptu meeting with Donald Trump. The subject of the meeting? Urging the incoming administration to bury the two-state solution.

Bennett didn’t meet the president-elect but did sit with three of Trump’s top unnamed Middle East advisors irking Netanyahu while positioning himself as the champion of Judea and Samaria.

Following Bennett’s return Netanyahu slapped an order on his cabinet to avoid any unauthorized contact with the incoming US administration.

But this won’t be the last of the Bennett-Netanyahu tug of war. Both politically and personally Bennett and his Jewish Home Party are at odds with Netanyahu and the Likud. Bennett supports annexing 60% of Judea and Samaria where 90% of the Jewish settlements are located. Officially Netanyahu supports a two-state solution at least to the extent that it keeps the meddling international community and Israel’s vocal leftists off his back. But nobody really knows how Netanyahu feels about the settlements anymore and many right-wingers feel that if push comes to shove Netanyahu will give the settlements a shove.

The Bibi of 2016 isn’t the same Bibi of his first term in 1996 when he took President Bill Clinton on a helicopter tour of Judea and Samaria to impress upon him the strategic vulnerability of the country and show him that Jewish settlements rarely encroach on Arab villages. The Bibi of 2016 avoids identifying openly with the right. To him it’s a wise strategy and it’s contributed to the fact that last week Netanyahu surpassed David Ben-Gurion as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. Bennett and his second-in-command the popular justice minister Ayelet Shaked have no such compunction when it comes to identity politics. With Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman leaning more to the left Bennett and Shaked have positioned themselves as the leaders of Israel’s religious right. They feel the electorate is leaning that way and that they can use the levers available to coalition partners to keep Netanyahu from heading in Lieberman’s direction.

Other than attempting to usurp Netanyahu’s budding relationship with Trump Jewish Home has taken the initiative to break the left’s stranglehold on Israel’s judiciary. Four Supreme Court justices are retiring in 2017. Shaked recently released a list of 28 candidates for those positions and may introduce a bill to give her and the Knesset — with its right-wing majority — more power over those appointments.

Bennett and Shaked are also outflanking Bibi on the right in Amona an outpost 42 miles north of Jerusalem and home to some 40 Jewish families.