From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Lapid: Everyone who saw what happened in Knesset yesterday knows government will fall
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleSam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
Opposition Leader Yair Lapid slams National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir as a “TikTok clown” and calls for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his “extremist and deranged government” to apologize to the people of Israel for their actions.
Addressing reporters ahead of his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, Lapid says that while his prediction last year that the government would fall in 2024 did not come true, “everyone who was in the Knesset yesterday understood that it will not take long.”
“We saw what happened here yesterday. A pale and weak prime minister, and Ben Gvir was making fun of him in front of the nation. I won’t be tempted to give another forecast with a timetable, but I was only wrong about the date, and I have no intention of apologizing.”
Lapid says that the coalition is only holding itself together because its members know that if elections were held today most of them would not be voted back into the Knesset.
“This government is a sick, corrupt, dysfunctional body, the most extreme and failed government in the history of the country, and it has lost the public’s trust,” he says.
Netanyahu left the hospital yesterday evening, two days after undergoing prostate surgery, in order to vote on a critical budget-related bill after Ben Gvir announced that he would oppose the legislation. The bill passed by one vote.
The Times of Israel Community.