Lapid rips up ‘corrupt’ WZO leadership deal, opens door for Yair Netanyahu appointment

The process of appointing new leadership roles at large Zionist institutions fell apart again on Wednesday when Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid announced that his party will no longer take part in any of the negotiations, decrying a system steeped in “a culture of corruption and political appointments.”

Lapid’s move upends a long-negotiated agreement that divvies up jobs at the major organizations like the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish National Fund-KKL between supporters of the various political factions. It could ultimately reopen the possibility that Yair Netanyahu, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s elder son, will receive a plum executive role at the WZO.

Lapid said he will instead advance legislation to nationalize the Jewish National Fund-KKL, arguing that the only way to “clean up this organization and the other national institutions is to bring them under state law, state audit, and the strictest transparency regulations.”

In a message to the press, Lapid said that his party “will not be part of any of the agreements in the Zionist institutions. We will not take budgets, we will not take managerial positions, and we will not be part of the deal being stitched together there.”

“We entered politics to fight corruption, not to be part of a system to arrange jobs for the Netanyahu family and the [Shas party Chairman Aryeh] Deri family. We wanted to clean the national institutions of the culture of corruption and political appointments — but it’s not possible.” Lapid said. “There’s no way to do it, and no one to do it with.”

It is not clear at this point what paths forward are available in the process currently underway of appointing new leadership at Zionist institutions like the WZO and Jewish National Fund-KKL, a WZO source said.

Upending an upheaval

Last Wednesday, an agreement on the leadership of Zionist institutions like the WZO and Jewish National Fund-KKL, which control billions of dollars in funding for Jewish causes, was reached with broad wall-to-wall support across coalition parties was slated to be signed before a surprise addition to the agreement upended everything.

At the last moment, it was revealed that Likud MK and Netanyahu loyalist Miki Zohar had included a cushy job for the prime minister’s son, which comes with an office, a car, and a salary commensurate with that of a government minister.

That crossed a red line for virtually all parties involved, leading to a firestorm that caused the original agreement to be abandoned. A new plan was drawn up over the weekend, and members of the Zionist General Council voted through Wednesday morning on a new plan that included a power-sharing arrangement that would split control of the institutions between Likud representatives – led by Rabbi Doron Perez, chairman of the religious Zionist World Mizrachi movement and father of Cpt. Daniel Perez, who was killed in the October 7 Hamas attack – and Yesh Atid. Under the new plan, there would have been no job for Yair Netanyahu.

However, Lapid’s decision on Wednesday evening to abandon the Zionist institutions sets the whole process back at square one, starting with the draft of a new leadership agreement to be voted upon once again.

In his statement Wednesday, Lapid said that the attempt to arrange a job for Yair Netanyahu and others “is just the tip of the iceberg of what’s going on there.”

Describing “an entire culture of corruption, Lapid said, “The new agreement includes, for example, the creation of seven new departments with countless employees that all have one thing in common: they’re not necessary,” Lapid said.

After seeing all the details, Lapid said, “I’ve reached the conclusion that they can’t be fixed — they need to be shut down. Yesh Atid will submit a bill for the immediate nationalization of the KKL.”

A history of corruption

Lapid has long called for the dissolution of Zionist institutions like JNF-KKL and WZO, accusing them of corruption, waste and excessive politics. This, even though — as noted in an article on Wednesday in Zman Yisrael, The Times of Israel’s Hebrew site — Lapid’s involvement in party negotiations had firmly established him as their most powerful player.

That article, and the insinuation that Lapid was now as deeply involved in the corruption as anyone else, was part of what led him to upend the entire process, a WZO source said.

Under the latest version of the agreement, now abandoned, Perez was to become either the president of the WZO or the chair of Keren Hayesod.

Current WZO chair Yaakov Hagoel would continue in that position for the first half of the five-year term, and be replaced, two and a half years in, by a member of the Yesh Atid party.

The chair of the Jewish National Fund-KKL would be occupied first by Yesh Atid MK Meir Cohen, who would retire from the Knesset after 12 years. He would be replaced in the middle of his term by a representative of the Likud party.

It is not yet clear whether Zohar will now try again to secure an executive position for the prime minister’s son. It is widely believed that the prime minister colluded with Zohar on the matter, helping Zohar win the election for the leadership of World Likud over his rival Hagoel, in exchange for Yair’s nomination.

However, Zohar told Hebrew media outlets last week that it was his idea to nominate Yair Netanyahu, and that the prime minister was unaware of the effort.

But sources said that in recent days, officials in the Prime Minister’s Office had been exerting pressure to still include Yair Netanyahu.

The younger Netanyahu, who has spent much of the past two years living in Miami, Florida, is best known for his firebrand social media presence and association with several far-right European and American politicians and figures. In recent months, he has denounced the current IDF chief of staff, called Qatar’s leader a modern-day Hitler, blamed the Israeli left for major fires, and castigated the president of France.