Israel's Wildcard: Naftali Bennett The Man Who Could Stop The Peace Process.

Israel's Wildcard: Naftali Bennett The Man Who Could Stop The Peace Process. (Spiegel). By Julia Amalia Heyer.
Naftali Bennett, the head of the the settlements party Jewish Home rejects negotiations with the Palestinians and says he will allow the Israeli government to collapse if necessary. A decision on whether talks will proceed is expected this week.

Great Aunt Zila is also part of the reason Bennett, who sees himself as a businessman through and through, has now become a politician.

A booming software business in Israel and the United States no longer contented him after a life-changing deployment in the 2006 Lebanon war. At the time, he had just become a first-time father and asked himself, "What is it that these Hezbollah guys actually want?" In Lebanon, he says he learned "they all still have a single goal in mind -- to kills us."

Since then, Bennett has had an almost singular mission. When he describes it, he sounds neither quixotic nor pathetic. His voice instead betrays his deep determination to get the job done. "My task is to keep Judaism alive, to make it stronger and to fight its enemies," the economics minister says, adding that he will dedicate his "life to Israel's survival."

As part of his mission, though, he now risks a major rift within Israel's coalition government. The Israeli daily Haaretz recently wrote that the politician is currently doing more to determine the country's fate than any other. Read the full story here.