Opposition leader on his fight for Israel's democracy and bringing the voice of ordinary Israelis to the Knesset
By GIL HOFFMANYesh Atid leader Yair Lapid participates in a discussion on the government formation bill, April 2020.(photo credit: KNESSET SPOKESPERSON'S OFFICE)
On Monday, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid came to the Knesset. He entered a stormy session of the special committee formed to legislate the bills needed for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White leader Benny Gantz to form a coalition and made a surprising announcement.According to the proposed bills, 75 MKs would be needed to change the law and cancel the rotation between Netanyahu and Gantz that, if the agreement goes ahead, will take place in November 2021. Netanyahu has 59 MKs in his right-wing bloc. Lapid said he would give him the remaining 16.“Any time Bibi wants to stop the rotation [in the Prime Minister’s Office], all he has to do is come to me and say that he wants to return the laws to how they were before, and I will say yes,” Lapid told the committee. “We respect our democracy, and these horrible and shameful bills must be canceled.”The bombastic headline was immediate – “Lapid ready to vote with Netanyahu to prevent Gantz becoming PM.”As an articulate anchorman turned politician, Lapid thought the media misrepresented what he said by making his comment about Gantz, his former political partner, and not about his upcoming role as the presumptive opposition leader whose job, he explained, is to always work to present an alternative to the ruling government.“What I said was that since what they’re doing is horrible, taking the Basic Laws and changing them in an outrageous way, if at any given moment we have the opportunity to reverse the changes, then we would vote for going back to the original Basic Laws,” Lapid told The Jerusalem Post in an interview this week. “They are messing with the foundations of our democracy for a short-term political fix, and that’s something you just don’t do. So I said if you think this can’t be reversed, you’re wrong, and we will do everything to reverse it. I’m not vindictive about Gantz. It has nothing to do with him.”At the same meeting, Lapid told the MKs that the rotation won’t happen, because Netanyahu will never live up to his side of the deal, and that anyone who knows Netanyahu knows that.“Let’s be absolutely clear: There is no way on earth I would do anything that would keep Netanyahu in power for an extra hour, let alone a day,” he told the Post. “What bothers me isn’t Benny Gantz. It’s that we have a prime minister with three indictments, and that when you talk to people about something being fundamentally wrong with Israeli democracy, their eyes start to glaze over and they get a bit bored, as if this is old news. It isn’t old news, it’s now. In three weeks the prime minister is starting his criminal trial.”Going further, Lapid said: “Everything that’s sacred in our politics – honesty, integrity, decency – is being thrown under the bus. What bothers me is that Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi are cooperating with this. Thank God, there is still an opposition in this country to say that things aren’t okay. This is a wonderful country with amazing people, and we shouldn’t have started our 73rd year like this. The wonderful people of this country deserve so much more than this government.”Lapid charged that Netanyahu and Gantz, despite the crisis over the coronavirus, are forming the largest and most expensive government in Israel’s history, with as many as 36 ministers and 16 deputy ministers.
“This shows they couldn’t care less about the crisis or about unity,” he said. “It’s about jobs. They don’t even see the small businesses that are losing their entire life’s work and the more than a million new unemployed. They forgot everything they ever said about leading by example. It’s not ‘Israel before everything’ as we promised, it’s a cabinet seat before everything.”Lapid recalled how immediately after losing her husband last month, his mother-in-law had to close her shop in Ramat Hasharon after 30 years of working from morning until night.“She lost her husband, and she lost her job, so she turns on the TV because there is nothing else to do, and she sees a new government with 36 ministers, 16 deputy ministers and a prime minister with three indictments, and they have one thing in common: they don’t care anymore,” he said. “The majority of people in the country are looking at this and saying ‘it’s not what we wanted.’ As the presumptive head of the opposition, I’m giving them a voice.”Lapid spoke a week ahead of next Thursday’s deadline for a coalition to be formed, amid speculation that Netanyahu may pull a last-minute trick on Gantz. But Lapid said he does not doubt that a government is on the way.“I think there will be [a government] because Blue and White already gave up on everything,” he said. “They gave up on issues of religion and state, a committee to investigate the Submarines Affair, Netanyahu appointing the next police inspector-general, the next attorney-general, and even the judges whom he will appeal to in the Supreme Court. If they already gave up on everything, there likely will be a government.“What we’re trying to do is to limit the damage to Israel’s democracy as much as we can, limit the damage to the Supreme Court, to the Basic Laws, to the checks and balances of democracy. That’s the fight we’re leading now.”LAPID SAID that if Netanyahu and Gantz cannot form a government on time, he will suggest going back to his offer of a six-month freeze in Israeli politics with the current government until the coronavirus crisis ends.“Despite what they’re saying, I was always against a fourth election,” he said. “I don’t think theirs is the government we need now, and I don’t think they can pretend they went in because of the coronavirus, because they gave up on the health minister, the finance minister and the chairmanship of the Finance Committee.”Asked what would happen in six months according to the proposal, which Yesh Atid wrote as a bill, he said Israel would go back to the point where it is now, in which any MK has 21 days to form a government.“Even after the six months, we won’t go straight to an election but will have another shot at forming a government,” he said. “I don’t think what we need is this huge, bloated, wasteful government, which will become a bureaucratic monster. Let’s leave politics aside. The last thing the country needs is a political process now. The government we have is the wrong one, but we have a functional Knesset that can prevent them from taking irreversible steps. We can fight the coronavirus, help small businesses, help the unemployed. No one wants to see political dealing right now.”The current coalition agreement took the six-month idea and turned it into an incubator period, in which the government would deal with the virus and its economic impact before coalition guidelines are drafted on other key issues. But Lapid said he does not buy that.“There isn’t a single clause in the coalition agreement about actually dealing with the coronavirus,” he said. “It’s only about positions in government, rotations and how politicians get the best jobs. There isn’t a single word about how to deal with the crisis. They wrote so many pages about their own jobs. They could have written about how to deal with the crisis, but all they wrote is an empty declaration.”Lapid said the lack of coalition guidelines is unprecedented. He said the public should not accept this.“They care about their jobs, not the jobs Israelis are losing,” he said. “That’s why I’m angry. It has nothing to do with being vindictive.”Lapid was asked to clarify further what he would do if, after 18 months, Netanyahu has not been convicted and is ready to hand over power to Gantz. Asked if he would then enable Gantz to take over as prime minister, he explained why the answer is no.“Elections right now are bad for Israel, but this is the wrong government for the country,” he said. “After it is obvious the crisis is over, then my job is to bring down this government at the first opportunity, and that’s what I’ll do.”Lapid said that even Likud politicians say off the record that Gantz will never become prime minister, and that if anyone believes Netanyahu will let him, “I’ve got a used car to sell him.”In that election that could take place then, Lapid intends to run as the head of the political bloc that will be the main alternative to the Likud. He said he learned a lesson from what happened in his alliance with Gantz not to run under another party again.“We think this country needs leadership that isn’t so preoccupied with itself but cares about the people,” he said. “That starts with the small businesses and the unemployed. They need to know someone cares for them. We’ve proven to be people of our word for the simple reason that when we promise something to the people, we take that promise seriously.”Asked about rumors that Yesh Atid could run with Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party, he said: “It’s very early to discuss these things. What we need to do is to minimize the damage from this government to the people.”Preparing for that election, Lapid published a socioeconomic plan to support small businesses.The plan calls for three basic steps: Small businesses would be paid unemployment benefits. A compensation mechanism that would be immediate and efficient would be set up. The government would pay businesses 80% of the salaries of people who have been furloughed, in return for a commitment to get them back to work after the crisis, so that as few people as possible lose their jobs. Similar plans are in effect in Germany and Denmark.ON DIPLOMATIC issues, Lapid responded to Netanyahu’s statement in a February interview with the Post that even if a Democrat wins the American election, US President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan will be implemented.“Once the Trump plan is put forward, the goalposts will have been moved, and it will be very difficult for any administration to move them back,” Netanyahu said. “Any administration, Democrat or Republican, will have to work by the new realities.”Lapid said that Netanyahu’s statement proved that he is out of touch with Democratic leaders.“If he said that, then it’s been a very long time since Netanyahu has spoken to the Democrats, which is a problem,” Lapid said. “One of the problems I have with this government is the fact that Israel used to be bipartisan and should have stayed that way, but it’s not anymore. Netanyahu has affiliated himself with the Republicans, which makes Democrats look at the situation and think maybe it’s not bipartisan. I’ve been telling them that Israel is and should remain a bipartisan issue. I speak to Democrats on a regular basis, and I can say pretty confidently that not one of them will say they’ve spoken to Netanyahu and said they’d adopt the Trump plan.”Lapid said Trump’s framework is a good plan and he supports it. But he said the Democrats will not.“We will be in deep trouble if we annex land and go toe to toe with an American president,” he said. “It has to be coordinated, and even Netanyahu knows that. Even in the worst days of the relationship with President Obama, anything of this magnitude was coordinated.“Right now, though, it’s irrelevant. Netanyahu keeps raising the annexation issue to move the attention away from the fact that there will be 36 ministers, 16 deputy ministers and this ridiculous government that makes people angry. He’s trying to get us to talk about annexation so that we don’t talk about the daily lives of Israelis, collapsing small businesses and a million new unemployed. That’s what we need to deal with now.”
