Lapid accuses Democrats chair Golan of ‘breaking’ terms of Labor-Meretz merger deal

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid criticizes Democrats chairman Yair Golan for “breaking” the Labor party’s agreement with the left-wing Meretz faction which led to the creation of the unified Democrats party in June 2024.

Last week, Channel 12 reported that Golan was trying to convince Meretz to give up several of their places on the party list for other candidates to allow for additional candidates to join. However, Meretz reportedly threatened to withdraw from The Democrats should Golan take away any of their places without their agreement.

Speaking with reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Lapid claims that the two parties splitting would be a “disaster” and had they run together in the last election, “I would be standing here today as prime minister, not as opposition leader.”

Meretz was unable to pass the election threshold in the 2022 election and did not make it into the Knesset. It was a member of the short-lived 2021-2022 “government of change” headed by Lapid and former prime minister Naftali Bennett.

Lapid and Golan have traded barbs in recent months, with Golan slamming Lapid last September for saying that there won’t be another government with Arab parties after Hamas’s October 7 attack. In October, a leaked recording purported to capture Lapid accusing Golan’s party of “weakening” his centrist Yesh Atid party during a Zoom with party activists.

The Democrats “want to weaken us because they want to draw votes away from us,” he said then. Such behavior is “legitimate in the political world, but they also know the truth — and the truth is that Yesh Atid is doing an exceptional job in opposition under very difficult conditions, winning battles without losing its identity and without becoming what it hates.”