Lapid: If October 7 happened on my watch, I would have resigned immediately

26 December 2023, 12:01 pm 6 Edit

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid leads a Yesh Atid faction meeting at the Knesset, December 25, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

In a sharp statement against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid tells Army Radio that if the October 7 attacks had happened on his watch, he would have resigned the same day.

“I don’t trust Netanyahu,” says Lapid, who served as prime minister from July to December 2022. “He is a man who cannot be trusted to conduct a war. If this had happened on my watch, I would have resigned that same day.”

Referring to the government he headed along with former prime minister Naftali Bennett, Lapid says, “In our time, Hamas knew that it wouldn’t attack. It recognized weakness in the country’s leadership, the worst in the country’s history, and attacked.”

“How can you trust a cabinet headed by Netanyahu? Every day that passes he is less concerned with it,” he continues.

“Changing prime minister in the middle of war is not good, but the fact that he is in office is worse.”