Yair Lapid evasive when asked if Gadi Eisenkot could take helm of Yesh Atid party

By ToI Staff 5 July 2025, 10:03 pm

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L: Gadi Eisenkot holds a press conference after announcing his resignation from the Knesset, in Tel Aviv, July 1, 2025. (Erik Marmor/Flash90); R: Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who heads the Yesh Atid party, leads a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, June 30, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, who heads the Yesh Atid party, is evasive when asked whether fellow opposition figure Gadi Eisenkot could take his spot as party leader in the next elections.

Eisenkot quit the Knesset on Monday, leaving the centrist National Unity party, in which he held the No. 2. role, citing differences of opinion with party leader Benny Gantz.

“I’ll agree to do whatever is necessary to replace the government in Israel,” Lapid says, on Channel 12’s “Meet the Press.”

“These are processes, they should be done wisely; certainly, with a man like Gadi, to whom discretion is important, as it is to me, I will manage these things with him, not with you,” the opposition leader continues.

“I think I am the right man to lead Israel,” says Lapid, who served as prime minister for about six months in 2022; but, he adds: “Part of why I’m the right man is that I’m ready to do whatever is good for the state.”

Polls since October 7, 2023, have consistently shown that, were elections to be held immediately, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would lose his premiership.

The next election is due in October 2026 but may be called earlier if the current coalition collapses.