The failure of Yair Lapid and his government is becoming more apparent as time passes. Leaning on the Arab factions has proven to be completely impossible, and the departure of their representatives in the Knesset from the plenum as a protest against the playing of the national anthem “Hope” indicates their desire to cancel the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish state. Mansor Abbas does remain in the plenum, but this too is probably a tactical move to continue benefiting from the large budgets allocated to the Arabs in the Lapid government. There was no one like these factions during the time of Ben-Gurion, Sharett and Eshkol – so the Arabs accepted the victory of the IDF in the War of Independence as a fact and made peace with it.
Lapid at the UN: “An agreement with the Palestinians is the right thing for Israel’s security”
“We will return faster than you think”: Lapid’s message at the last cabinet meeting
Lapid’s major and major failure is his speech at the UN on the two-state solution. He may not be discriminating about his statements that have political implications, but he certainly knew that Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in completely muting the “two-state” issue, which was little mentioned in international politics during Netanyahu’s time. We already have two Arab states in the original territories of the Land of Israel – the Kingdom of Jordan and the Kingdom of Gaza. There is no need for a third Arab state on the backs of the Jewish people, when in any case the one and a half million Arabs within its territories will remain with us. This is a plan for the safe destruction of the State of Israel.
In addition to the Arab issue, Lapid made many other mistakes along the way: he destroyed our relations with Poland by making militant statements against it, after 77 years had passed since the end of World War II. He also damaged our relations with Russia by showing sympathy for Ukraine, and his excuse must be that he is on the so-called “moral” side of foreign policy. In fact, he failed because he did not know how to explain our delicate situation to the Ukrainians.
An ancient Roman proverb says that the gods support the strong. Lapid showed weakness in his foreign and domestic policy, and I attribute to his weakness the many attacks during his failed government which was patchwork. It must be understood once and for all that when the Arabs talk about “equality of rights” they do not mean civil equality – such equality the Arabs have in the State of Israel – even though they do not require equality of duties such as military service. Their demand is to receive state governance and recognition of the state instead of the state of Israel – a bi-national state. This is the “equality” which is actually not equality, but the abolition of the Jewish nation state. We have not heard that the Arabs in France demand that France become a Franco-Arab state.
We ended the war of liberation in 1948, but from their point of view, they haven’t finished it yet. They feel and know that Lapid and his government were weak, and could be used for their purposes. In this situation, it is worth recalling the timeless words that Pericles, the head of the Athenian democracy in the fifth century BC, said about the “peace seekers” in Athens who wanted to surrender to Sparta: “There are among us people who are ready to give up their freedom, to surrender to the enemy at any cost, provided they live in peace. Such friends of peace can destroy our country. Don’t be fooled by such citizens… Know that our country has a great name in the whole world, because it has never succumbed to calamities.”
And in summing up Lapid’s failure, it is worth mentioning how he dared to give up Israeli maritime territory and withdrew from it in favor of Lebanon, without any serious discussion. What would not have happened in other countries – in our country won praiseful headlines in the media.