Yesh Atid chairperson MK Yair Lapid held a meeting of his party on Monday, where he spoke about the coalition talks with Zionist Union that collapsed, as well as the talks with MK Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu that have hit a “dead end.”
“The central problem of the state of Israel is the political system in all its malfunctioning,” said Lapid. “A corrupt, corrupting and ugly political system that spoils everything. We need to decide if we want a big Israel or small politics.”
Lapid turned his criticism on Opposition head MK Yitzhak Herzog’s Zionist Union party, and in particular his Labor faction that has seen intense fallout over the covert negotiations on a unity government.
“People curse each other in public and then go into closed rooms and hold negotiations,” he said of Herzog’s talks with Likud. “If I could I would submit a motion of no confidence in the Opposition. The left is no better than the right. What’s so complicated about just saying no?”
Lapid revealed that several months ago he received an offer from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to take over as Foreign Minister in addition to several other ministerial portfolios, but he refused the offer because of his promises to his voters.
“It isn’t hard to stand on your promises,” he said.
He quipped that the last week reminded him of Netanyahu’s “Bibisitter” ad from before the last elections, in which the Prime Minister presented himself as a babysitter keeping the various party heads represented by unruly children in check.
“It really is a kindergarten, other than one thing. In what kindergarten do they speak the way they spoke this week in the political system?” he posed.
“The worst is that people are starting to tell themselves ‘that’s how it is,’ that’s how it is and those who don’t understand that are not politicians. That isn’t how it is, honesty is strength. Israel will be big if it thinks big. We must not despair of the state and the system. We must not despair. We have to return to think about what’s good for the state, not what’s good for the politicians.”
