Opposition head MK Yair Lapid is willing to join Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s emergency government to replace National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former prime minister told Channel 12 on Wednesday evening.
Ben-Gvir had threatened to leave the government if the proposal for the hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza, which he called “negligent,” would go ahead.
Both National Unity and Otzma Yehudit threatened to leave the emergency government over a possible hostage deal for the release of Israelis being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“A reckless deal equals dismantling the government,” Ben-Gvir wrote on X.
Lapid keen to serve as ‘safety net’ for Gaza hostage deal
Opposition leader and Yesh Atid Chairman MK Yair Lapid said soon after that his party would serve as a “safety net for any deal that will return the hostages to their homes.”
“Yesh Atid will not allow Netanyahu’s political problems to block a hostage deal that would bring them home,” the party wrote on X soon after. “Lapid said from day one that it would back any deal, and it will continue to do so. They must be returned home.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Lapid expressed the urgency for reaching a deal: “The first clause, the first line, in the contract between the state and its citizens, says that the state is responsible for their lives; not only for their health or the education of their children but for life in the most basic and simplest sense.”
“We have no way to bring our dead back to life, but we have to bring the hostages home, otherwise something very basic will crumble in our relationship with each other, in the relationship between a people and their country,” he continued, “certainly, in the fundamental trust between the citizens and the government. This must not happen. Some things are not up for debate.”
This is a developing story.
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