MK Yair Lapid blasted his former political partner Blue and White leader Benny Gantz on Tuesday, accusing him of misleading his voters by agreeing to a power-sharing deal with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lapid, who co-chaired the Blue and White political alliance with Gantz that tried to unseat Netanyahu in three straight elections, said that Gantz carried out "the greatest deception in Israeli history."
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He further accused Gantz of helping Netanyahu, who is standing trial for alleged corruption in three cases, evade justice. "You don't fight corruption from within. If you are inside, you are part of the corruption, and you are corrupt," he said.
"I apologize to all those I convinced to vote for Gantz and Blue and White, I could not anticipate that they would steal your votes and create Netanyahu's fifth government," Lapid said on Tuesday. Lapid said that Blue and White distorted their own election pledge of putting Israel first. "They put their own seat above everything else," Lapid lambasted.
The deal with Gantz will have Netanyahu serve for 18 months as prime minister, and then Gantz serving for another 18 months, with each serving as the other's deputy in rotation.
In announcing the deal, Gantz admitted that he was reneging on his pledge not to sit in Netanyahu's government, but added that circumstances have changed due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Likud defended Gantz's move on Tuesday, hitting back at Lapid: "Rather than show responsibility and join an emergency government to help Israelis struggling to make a living, Lapid has preferred to stay in the opposition and try to take Israel into another round of elections and lecture us from the bleachers."
Meanwhile, the deal with Gantz came under attack on Tuesday by Yamina, the right-wing faction that is considered one of Netanyahu's allies. Yamina is expected to get only a few ministerial portfolios in the new government and has threatened to stay in the opposition.
But sources within Likud said that the prime minister was keen on keeping them in his government. "Netanyahu needs them in his cabinet. There are some ideological matters, like the extension of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria [under the Trump administration's peace plan] that could be torpedoed if Yamina doesn't join us. Netanyahu wants Yamina as full-fledged partners on the Right," a Likud source told Israel Hayom.
