From the Liveblog of
Monday, January 22, 2024
Lapid urges Netanyahu to negotiate date for new elections
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. 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 during his Yesh Atid party’s weekly faction meeting in the Knesset, calls on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to sit down and negotiate a date for new elections.
Despite threatening to promote a motion of no-confidence in the prime minister should the cabinet pass a budget that does not slash coalition funds, “we will wait another week,” Lapid says, citing the government’s delay in submitting the budget to the Knesset.
In the meantime, “I have a proposal for Benjamin Netanyahu: let’s sit down, you and I, the prime minister and the leader of the opposition, and set a date,” he says, arguing that elections are inevitable.
“It will take another month, two more months. In the end it will come. There are enough people in your coalition who can’t take it anymore,” he argues, calling the current government “dangerous to the people of Israel.”
“After the greatest disaster in the country’s history, we need a government that will regain the trust of the public, the trust of the security system, that will have a plan for the day after,” Lapid adds, asserting that he is “willing to discuss any reasonable offer.”
