In midst of coalition crisis, Lapid slams Likud ‘corruption,’ ‘old politics’

In a sign of growing tensions in the ruling coalition, Finance Minister Yair Lapid slammed Likud, saying the ruling party was “so detached that they are leading us to completely pointless elections.”

In a speech he delivered Tuesday morning to the Sderot Conference for Society in the eponymous southern town, Lapid pilloried Likud leaders for conducting an “old politics” of “selling out the country for the sake of primaries and political machines.”

The aggressive tone of his speech may be the clearest signal yet that the coalition’s days are numbered.

“This week I said in the cabinet that [former Likud prime minister] Menachem Begin would not be acceptable to today’s Likud. The veteran Likud [ministers] around the table quietly agreed with me,” the Yesh Atid party chief said.

“But I wasn’t only talking about the nation-state law” that sparked fierce debate in Sunday’s cabinet meeting, “but also about integrity, humility and our national priorities. As soon as [the Likud leadership] started worrying about the Likud Central Committee, it stopped worrying about [Israeli] society, all of society,” he charged.

“I come to you in the middle of a crisis,” he told conference-goers in a speech that sounded a distinctly electioneering tone. “People at home, and in the media, think each day brings another coalition crisis on another topic. That’s not the case.”

The public spats between coalition parties over the nation-state law, Lapid’s “0% VAT” plan to cut taxes for some first-time homebuyers, reforming private healthcare services, privatization of government companies, and other issues “are all the same crisis,” he said.

“This is the old politics that are trying to take us backward, trying to return us to the wheeling-and-dealing, the blackmail, the special-interests game, the corruption in government, the selling out of the country for the sake of primaries and political machines, where no one cares about the country because the only thing that is important to them is their office and their Central Committee members and arranging jobs for one another,” he accused.

Likud leaders “are so detached that they are leading us to completely pointless elections, freezing the [2015 state] budget for three weeks now, while the streets of Israel burn, violence rages and citizens can’t make ends meet.”

Yesh Atid MKs, he added, “insist on cleaning out the stables, going to all the sick places in Israeli society and the Israeli government in order to fix and change, making sure the state works for the citizen, stopping the spread of racism, and creating a new order in government – clean, transparent, fair, socially oriented.”

Lapid used much of the speech to defend his proposed budget, which he called “the most socially oriented ever.”

“This is a budget that, for a change, is not dictated by the interests that have taken over the Likud Central Committee and penetrated the other old parties,” he declared.

Speculation is rife in the political system over the possibility that the coalition will collapse in the coming days or weeks due to disagreements over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to pass a Basic Law defining the State of Israel as the Jewish nation-state. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Finance Minister Yair Lapid have vowed to torpedo preliminary Knesset votes slated for next week on two right-wing drafts of the proposed bill that will then be replaced by the prime minister’s proposal, and both sides have hinted that they were willing to go to elections over the impasse.