Lapid: Netanyahu offered me Foreign Ministry

Yesh Atid leader and former finance minister Yair Lapid said Saturday that associates of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had offered him the Foreign Ministry in a bid to draw him into the government, an offer he said he refused.

Lapid also accused the new government of disgraceful conduct amid a “festival” of ministerial titles and budgetary “extortion” by coalition partners.

“They offered me to be foreign minister and they offered us three other portfolios,” Lapid told Channel 2 News. “They wanted to get a larger government. It’s no secret that they want a larger government.”

Lapid said the offer was rejected outright. “We told them it wouldn’t happen and that there was no point discussing it,” he said. “This is a government we mustn’t be part of.”

The former minister’s statement was immediately denied by Likud officials as he spoke on the air, to which he replied: “Likud can stand and deny it all they want.”

Lapid called the new coalition “a terrible government conducting itself irresponsibly, that began its term with a liquidation sale (of the state budget).”

He claimed he had left new Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon with “almost optimal conditions” with which to launch his planned reforms of the housing sector and the banking system.

Kahlon, he said “has good plans and he is a good man in my eyes. The problem is they’ve taken all the money and handed it out — to Shas, to United Torah Judaism, to Jewish Home, to Likud people — they’ve held a liquidation festival instead of running a responsible economy that will bring down prices and act for the people.”

Lapid charged the cabinet of “tarnishing the institution of minister in the state of Israel within 10 days of its existence.”

“They divided the foreign ministry between six different ministers and then act surprised that we have problems,” he said. “Every minister says ‘I’m not satisfied with what I’ve got.’ The transportation minister…is also I believe intelligence minister. The public security minister — as though there are no problems in the police…is also strategic affairs minister.

“Nothing is enough for anyone because they’re all glancing sideways at the others and saying ‘oh he got more than me.’ This is national irresponsibility,” he said.

Senior Likud lawmaker Gilad Erdan was confirmed as a minister on Monday, after a week of uncertainty regarding the role he would fill in Netanyahu’s new cabinet. Erdan will lead both the Public Security Ministry and the Strategic Affairs Ministry.

Meanwhile Netanyahu assigned Immigrant Absorption Minister Ze’ev Elkin the additional position of Jerusalem affairs minister Tuesday morning, an appointment seen as an attempt to appease Elkin, who had the Strategic Affairs Ministry taken away from him and handed to Erdan less than a week after he won it.

The Public Security Ministry had initially been handed to Yariv Levin who will now have to settle for the more modest title of tourism minister.

Erdan’s entry into the cabinet will also force Likud’s Benny Begin to resign as minister-without-portfolio after only 10 days on the job, due to the limit placed on the number of ministers by the cabinet.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.