Opposition leader Yair Lapid vowed that only his Yesh Atid Party would be successful in forming a government to defeat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming elections, during his remarks at a Knesset faction press conference on Monday.
Lapid warned that recent polls and in-depth studies showed it was not certain that the parties rivaling Netanyahu in the liberal camp would win the elections.
He called for the opposition parties to unite, saying, “If we don’t come to our senses, we will lose. If we continue working against one another, we will lose.”
“Precisely because the camp is so fragmented, Yesh Atid is the key to victory,” Lapid continued.
“We are not fighting here over the size of parties; we are fighting for the fate of our children, for what kind of country we want to be, and what values it will have.
“If we do everything that needs to be done, even then it’s not certain we will win, but at least we will have given ourselves a chance,” he said.
“Otherwise, at the end of the longest night of our lives, Benjamin, Sara, and Yair Netanyahu will go up on stage beaming, and shout, ‘We won, we won, we won again,’” Lapid warned.
The upcoming elections
The elections are scheduled to take place no later than October. Lapid vowed that the government he would form would not sit with Netanyahu’s Likud or the ultra-Orthodox parties Shas and United Torah Judaism (UTJ).
“We will not bend and will not form a government with the haredi parties that continue [to practice] extortion and draft evasion,” he said.
“If we want to win the elections, which are going to be the hardest and most critical elections ever held here, against an opponent who has no problem cheating, lying, and trying to steal the election, we [will] need to put up against him a formidable machine that shows no mercy,” Lapid said.
“To win elections, you need iron discipline. You need tens of thousands of activists in the streets, and only Yesh Atid has that.”
“To build a government afterward, you need political skill and experience that very few people possess,” he insisted.
“Forming a government is not a hobby; it’s a profession. I’m the only one in the camp who has done it,” Lapid said.
The makeup of the opposition
Among the party leaders in the opposition bloc are former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot (Yashar!), former prime minister Naftali Bennett (Bennett 2026), MK Benny Gantz (Blue and White), MK Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu), and Yair Golan (The Democrats).
Lapid and Bennett formed a national unity government in June 2021. Within the coalition agreement, Bennett served as prime minister from June 2021 until July 2022. Lapid succeeded him until the government was dissolved in December 2022.
After his remarks, Liberman criticized Lapid in return, saying, “Whoever wants to win the elections, trust me and vote for Yisrael Beytenu. Despair is not a work plan.”
The Democrats’ Golan said, “I have never entered a battle thinking I would lose.”
“We came to fight in order to win,” he added, while answering a press question on Lapid’s remarks on Monday in the Knesset.