Lapid: Netanyahu must ‘step aside’ temporarily to handle graft probes

Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid says that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shouldn’t have to resign over police recommendations to indict him for a series of corruption charges including bribery, but says he must “step aside” temporarily in order to fight his legal battles.

Speaking at the Conference of Presidents’ of Major Jewish Organizations and his Likud faction meeting in the Knesset just days after police recommended charges against the prime minister in two separate graft probes, Lapid proposes a scenario that would see Netanyahu take a temporary leave of absence until the allegations against him have been “resolved.”

“We don’t even have to go to elections, they can put in somebody as temporary prime minister from Likud as has been done before, until this is resolved,” Lapid tells the Jewish leaders.

“Being the prime minister of Israel is an incredibly difficult job, maybe the second hardest in the world after the American president, and you need to be a hundred percent in it. We need a prime minister who is focused on this,” the opposition party leader adds.

Later in the Knesset, Lapid slams Likud leaders for attacking him for giving testimony in one of the cases against Netanyahu.

“The investigations are complicated but there is simple conclusion: There is right and there is wrong, there are those who are right and those who are wrong. There are those who are corrupt and there are those who are clean,” he says.

— Raoul Wootliff