Lapid accuses government of ‘unpardonable failure,’ says won’t join emergency government

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid reaffirms that he will not join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz’s national emergency government, saying that he does not believe it will work with its current structure and membership.

Lapid points to three issues: the keeping of “extremists” in the hardline government, a double security cabinet structure without clear lines of authority, and the continued presence of those at fault for the “unpardonable failure” to prevent Saturday’s crushing Hamas terror attack, which triggered the ongoing war.

While saying that his Yesh Atid party will continue to support the war effort from outside and will not vote against today’s Knesset confirmation of five National Unity party ministers being added to Netanyahu’s government, Lapid says that it’s still necessary to “take the extremists out of the government of extremists.”

Lapid declines to name the extremists outright, but points to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and independent minister in the Defense Ministry Bezalel Smotrich, saying their presence in the security cabinet is “no way to make decisions.”

Ben Gvir and Smotrich, the latter of whom is also finance minister, sit on the security cabinet. The national emergency government will also form a smaller war cabinet, which will be entrusted with powers to set wartime policy and give operational and strategic directives to the security forces.

Lapid calls this “a structure that can’t work, it’ll just add to the mess,” because “instead of one cabinet, [there are] two cabinets that will clash.”

The opposition leader says that “what happened this last Shabbat is a failure without reparation,” and charges that those “who started the failure can’t fix it.”

In addition to Netanyahu at the helm, Lapid says it’s a particular problem that Ben Gvir is in charge of Israel’s police and that Smotrich oversees the West Bank’s Civil Administration, especially as he has failed to condemn recent retributive Jewish violence in Palestinian towns.

“If I had thought that what is happening today is a real unity government, I would have done it,” Lapid says, adding that in the interim, “We’ll support every action, we’ll help every way we can.”