Lapid says his former running mate Gantz is ‘unfit to be prime minister’
Yesh Atid chairman continues to attack his Blue and White ex-ally for joining government with Netanyahu, saying he ‘crumbled at the moment of truth’
Yesh Atid-Telem party leader Yair Lapid on Sunday lambasted his former running mate, Blue and White party chief Benny Gantz, calling him unfit to be prime minister.
“This government shouldn’t be formed,” the centrist leader said of the imminent unity government set to be formed after a deal was reached last week between Gantz and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff, entered politics early last year and formed an alliance with Yesh Atid party leader Lapid and former Likud defense minister Moshe Ya’alon. Their Blue and White party fought three elections on a promise never to sit in government with Netanyahu so long as he is facing corruption allegations, branding him divisive, corrupt and dangerous to Israel.
Having narrowly failed to defeat Netanyahu and his right-wing and ultra-Orthodox allies, however, Gantz late last month announced that he was prepared to join a government with the Likud leader after all — to battle the coronavirus pandemic and help protect Israeli democracy. He sought to do so alongside Lapid and Ya’alon, but they bitterly opposed the move, and their alliance collapsed, with Lapid now set to lead the Knesset opposition.
“The moment of truth came, and they crumbled,” Lapid charged during a press conference broadcast online. “Therefore, they are unfit for leadership, and Benny Gantz is unfit to be prime minister.”
Lapid also criticized the caretaker government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak, saying it had harmed the economy without adequate compensation. He said the process of seeking government support for business owners and employees who lost their livelihood was “cumbersome and inefficient.”
Lapid last week accused Gantz of perpetrating “the worst act of fraud in the history of this country” by joining forces with Netanyahu.
He claimed that the move meant various ongoing corruption allegations against Netanyahu would now never be probed, that Israeli democracy and the rule of law would be further undermined, that Gantz had capitulated to ultra-Orthodox coercion, and was guilty of numerous other acts of betrayal and hypocrisy.
He vowed to battle the coalition “in the Knesset, in the courts, in the streets and in the squares.”
Lapid also apologized “to all those people who I convinced to vote for Benny Gantz and Blue and White this past year. I didn’t believe that they would steal your vote and give it to Netanyahu, that they would use your vote to form the fifth Netanyahu government.”
And he predicted that the nascent government would not lost long. “When something is built on crooked foundations, it will fall apart. This government will fall apart, sooner than you think,” Lapid said. “I know what they think about one another. They won’t survive each other. And that’s a good thing. Israel deserves better than a corrupt government that stole their vote.”
The Times of Israel Community.