“I may not have slept for 36 hours, but in these 36 hours we did what you didn't accomplish in 36 months.” Prime Minister Naftali Bennett made that offhand remark Aug. 2, when his Cabinet approved the proposed budget. He was in the Knesset plenum, because the Likud managed to wrangle the 40 signatures from Knesset members needed to obligate him to attend a debate under the heading, “The Government’s Failure in Protecting the Security and Diplomatic Interests of the State of Israel and Its Harming of Israel’s Heritage.”

Bennett's remark came in response to a series of harsh attacks by members of the opposition. He was accused of passing a budget that harms the weaker sectors of the population. Meanwhile, coalition Knesset member Mansour Abbas of Ra’am, not Bennett, was called “the de facto prime minister,” for the enormous budgets he was able to get for the economic and social development of the Arab sector.

Then Bennett got up to speak. His remarks were nothing like the angry, belligerent speech he delivered July 12, when he called the opposition “the new sourpusses.” Back then, he took a page out of the Netanyahu playbook by addressing his predecessor by name as “Knesset member Bibi Netanyahu” at least 20 times, when convention would have him use Netanyahu’s official title, “Mr. chairman of the opposition.” In this speech, however, Bennett didn’t even mention Netanyahu once. Instead, he preferred to deliver mostly positive messages about the success of passing a budget.

More importantly, Bennett tried to deliver a message of unity, instead of focusing on the polarization that dominated Israeli politics for the last few years. He was interrupted often by the opposition, but he simply responded, “Right wing does not mean hatred of the left wing, it means love of the land.  … The left wing loves the people of Israel no less than the right wing. The line we have seen here in the past hour — which tries by force to create polarization — that is exactly what tore apart our previous state."