Future (Yesh Atid) party chairman Yair Lapid, who recently said he will be Prime Minister one day, has assured Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu he will not to bring down the next coalition before its term runs out, according to party sources.
The latest report follows rumor after rumor, many of them planted as part of the usual game of who can out-bluff whom during talks on forming a new coalition.
Lapid supposedly had told Likud ministers that his number one interest is himself. Although the statement that may be true not only for him but also for every other politician, it is unlikely to have been said by Lapid. He is a former journalist with no experience in politics, but bragging that his number one interest is himself would be obvious political suicide.
True or not, the alleged comments prompted Lapid to assure Netanyahu, “Don’t worry,” for whatever that is worth in Israeli politics.
Lapid sarcastically claimed this week that the Likud-Israel Beytenu ‘s major problem in negotiating with his party is simply, “We don’t have any experience and we don’t understand politics and that’s the reason that we have no choice but to stick to our values and principles.”
Meanwhile, Jewish Home chairman Naftali Bennett and the Likud are playing political poker, each one accusing the other of bad faith in coalition negotiations.
Lapid and Bennett head the two parties that Netanyahu needs if he does not want to go with the Haredi religious parties or call another election, which would be all but catastrophic economically and politically.