Yair Lapid, the reformist who sacrifices himself to bury the Netanyahu era

Israeli centrist leader Yair Lapid, on Thursday in Tel Aviv.JACK GUEZ / AFP

The short political career of the centrist leader Yair Lapid, who has just assumed the challenge of forming a government in Israel, is marked by sacrifices.

Two years ago he stepped back to hand over leadership of the center to Benny Gantz, then a popular former general with no political experience.

He is now ready to offer the post of prime minister to the right-wing Naftatli Bennett, who doubles the number of seats in the Knesset (Parliament), in order to turn the balance of Israeli forces around.

A champion of the laity and radical reformist, a famous television presenter until he decided to make the leap into politics in 2012, Lapid faces the challenge of leading an alliance of almost the entire opposition to remove Benjamin Netanyahu from power, from 71 years, the ruler who has been the longest at the helm of the Jewish state.

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"We need a government that reflects that we do not hate each other," defended the centrist candidate last week after receiving from the President of the State of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, the task of forming a Cabinet with a majority in the Knesset after the failure of Netanyahu, head of the Likud list, the most voted force in the March 23 elections.

They were the fourth since 2019.

“After two years of political paralysis, Israeli society is suffering.

A unity government is not a compromise or a last resort;

it is an objective that we need ”, confirmed Lapid, leader of the second formation with the most votes —Yesh Atid (There is a Future, in Hebrew) - in a public message.

It called for the forging of a coalition of up to eight parties to respond to the economic crisis derived from the pandemic and the threats to security in the Middle East.

It is a Herculean task.

After years of strategy of extreme opposition to Netanyahu, Lapid offers a profile of consensus and moderation.

He left the Executive of the Likud leader - in which he served as Finance Minister between 2013 and 2015 - and challenged him five times at the polls.

Yesh Atid's head of ranks now has the endorsement of 56 of the 120 seats in the Knesset.

He has behind him his own party, two conservative splinter formations of the Likud, the Labor Party, Meretz (the pacifist left) and five deputies from the Joint List (an Arab coalition representing the main Israeli minority).

But without Yamina's seven seats, Bennett's conservative nationalist party falls short of the 61-vote majority required for inauguration.

Lay radical

Lapid is a secular radical who advocates the two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians. But he has to make a deal with Bennett, a religious right-wing supporter of the annexation to Israel of much of the West Bank, and whose first alliance option has been the Netanyahu bloc along with the ultra-Orthodox and the extreme right. To convince him to join a coalition with the left and the Arab parties, Lapid has had to offer him to lead the government in the first place until the middle of the legislature, when both would rotate as prime minister.

Before June 2, when the deadline for him to form a government expires, he will have to consummate a pact between historically opposed parties: a mission that appears almost impossible.

He must first heal the wounds of the center, after the pact that Gantz signed a year ago with Netanyahu to join his government.

The fragmentation of the right, which is no longer present in a monolithic bloc around the Likud, offers it an unprecedented opportunity to try to remove from office a prime minister who has forced electoral repetitions in order to remain armored before justice in the corruption trial against him, at the same time that he has polarized society.

The son of a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Israel from the defunct Yugoslavia before also becoming a journalist and minister, Lapid exhibits a reformist program along the lines of French President Emmanuel Macron. Its axes are the fight against corruption and against the preponderance of the ultra-Orthodox, who represent 12% of the population, compared to the secular majority.

During his time in the Government, he promoted the incorporation of the students of the

yeshivas (

rabbinical schools)

into military service

, from which they were exempted.

"We do not hate the [ultra-Orthodox] Jaredis, but we can no longer support them," he warned then about the obligation that all communities in the country bear the same burdens.

The ultrareligious, who have been characterized in the pandemic for disobeying sanitary regulations, dedicate themselves almost exclusively to the study of the Torah, and receive subsidies from the State to be able to support their extensive families.

TV and print star

After years of hosting the weekend's star TV show, and writing columns in

Yedioth Ahronot

, the most widely circulated Hebrew daily, Lapid made a surprise in the 2013 election. An amateur boxer, he has put aside his usual informal attire to adopt the costume of a parliamentarian and statesman who aspires to open a new political period in Israel after the prolonged hegemony of a controversial leader, albeit of undisputed stature, such as Benjamin Netanyahu.

In his appearances before the international press, Lapid usually offers a liberal profile and favorable to an agreement with the Palestinians. If he succeeds in forming a government, his alliance with Bennett and other leaders of the right will predictably force him to veer toward the pragmatism of the

status quo:

the unstable balance in which Israel remains indoors and in front of the world.