Ministers pan Lapid for criticizing PM over US ties, mismanaging budget

Two senior Likud ministers hit back at Finance Minister Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) on Sunday for remarks he made Saturday criticizing the prime minister for his handling of state affairs, including the current coalition crisis over the “Jewish state” law, and for bungling relations with the US.

Lapid on Saturday charged that ties between the Netanyahu-led government and the Obama administration have reached such a nadir that the US’s assistance at the UN Security Council — including using its veto right on anti-Israel resolutions — was no longer assured, ahead of an expected Palestinian UN resolution demanding Israeli pullout to the 1967 lines.

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon told Army Radio Sunday morning that Lapid was also partly to blame for tense relations with its closest ally, after having opposed a deal earlier this month to purchase a second squadron of advanced F-35 stealth fighters from the United States. The nearly $3 billion deal would have eaten up much of the country’s annual aid package.

“How could [Lapid] have — in a meeting about such an important topic, the F-35 — opposed it in such a way that would harm our ties with the US?” Ya’alon asked.

“This is not how a government functions. [He] was against it because [he] wants to seem opposed to defense [spending], in an inappropriate way and for political purposes,” he said.

Ministers including Lapid and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz argued that the money for the jets could be put to better use. Lapid has called in the past for belt-tightening in the military as part of larger national austerity measures.

Steinitz, too, took a shot at Lapid on Sunday, saying he was acting like a 16-year-old.

The finance minister, he said, began his term of office saying “‘I’ll do it all on my own; I don’t need [input from] economists or the prime minister; I don’t need advice or ideas.’ Then after a year and a half, when it all comes crashing down, he complains that nobody’s been helping him.”

Ya’alon conceded in the Sunday morning interview that there were disagreements with the US but when the issues were critical, “Israel stood its ground.”

“Relations with the US are of strategic importance [to Israel]. Ties between our security establishments — led by the outgoing defense secretary, my friend Chuck Hagel, and myself — reached unprecedented heights,” he said.

Ya’alon has had a combative relationship with some US officials — at one point deriding US Secretary of State John Kerry as messianic — and was reportedly shut out of high-level meetings during a visit to Washington in October.

Amid growing speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may dissolve the government over the coalition crisis surrounding the “Jewish state” bill, Ya’alon, like Lapid, said that the time was not right for elections.

“It’s not what the State of Israel needs, but we are already in an atmosphere of elections. [But] I’m not concerned, a situation was created in which it is now impossible to govern,” Ya’alon said.

Netanyahu is reportedly set to decide on whether to call for early elections by Monday.

The “Jewish state” bill, which would enshrine Israel’s character as a Jewish state in Israel’s de facto constitution, has come under harsh criticism from Lapid, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, as well as opposition lawmakers, President Reuven Rivlin, and his predecessor Shimon Peres.

Critics say the law is undemocratic to Israel’s Arab and other minority populations. A stormy cabinet meeting on the bill last Sunday saw Livni accuse Netanyahu of backing the legislation in order to try and pry apart the coalition so that he can call elections.

“I am in favor of a nationality bill, but the existing draft will not pass as is,” said Lapid Saturday.