Opinion | One bureau, two camps and zero control: Bennett failed to manage his associates Israel today

During the accompanying film made by Zvika Hadar with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Bennett is seen sitting with senior AIPAC members.

To the naked eye this seems like reasonable and sensible advice from a political adviser fulfilling her role, but people close to Bennett say that the situation looks strange and that his immediate alignment seems to be under control.

Those same associates add that no adviser would have acted in this way in Rabin, Sharon or Netanyahu.

This is one example of the basis of the conflict in the Prime Minister's Office, which has become an office with two camps - on the one hand the people who have accompanied Bennett in recent years, led by close adviser Tal Gan Zvi, who received Bennett's chief of staff, and on the other - new political adviser Shimrit Meir.

There was everything: struggles for power, authority and control over Bennett's ear.

It included bad blood, negative briefings from both directions, and even, like an elementary school or a bunch of young boys, also secret and separate WhatsApp groups with Prime Minister Bennett.

In the most important bureau in the country, the two senior officials, Gan Zvi and Meir, did not even exchange a polite good morning greeting.

The allegations against Shimrit Meir were on two main issues: excessive intervention in every issue and dragging Bennett towards the center.

As in any workplace where every person has a role and does not like others to interfere, so too were Meir claimed that she broke boundaries beyond the political sphere and intervened in everything - in the political, media, security and even Corona.

Bureau officials argued that not only did she put her head into issues beyond her role in the field of political advice, she also ran away from taking responsibility in cases of mistakes.

Shimrit Meir was marked in the bureau as responsible for moving the opinions and political image of Naftali Bennett to the center.

The claim against Meir that she turned Bennett from "ten degrees to the right" into Bennett who calls Judea and Samaria the "West Bank."

In addition, Meir was accused of disconnecting Bennett from his people and relatives in the party.

The highlight was the retirement of MK Idit Silman who fell on Bennett like a thunderbolt on a clear day.

Bennett can look enviously across the road at the alternate prime minister's office.

Lapid and his bureau members manage to maintain a party three times larger on the right with talent and hard work.

From zoom talks every Saturday night with the ministers to plan for the rest of the week, to regular talks with the last MKs. The secret? Quality people who have come a long way together for many years. Bennett was looking for something new, and it did not work.

Selecting people, creating a pleasant work environment, dividing powers and intervening in disputes are critical in management, certainly in the most important bureau in Israel.

The failure in this case is registered in the name of one man - Naftali Bennett.

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