The head of the opposition, Yair Lapid, was interviewed this morning (Sunday) here B and addressed the protest against the legal reform. Lapid said that he supports negotiations only on the condition that the legislation is stopped, and that negotiations without stopping the legislation is a “fraud”.
Lapid addressed the claims against him from the right that he “fell in love with the protests” and he refuses to talk: “This is nonsense, already in January I offered to go to the president for talks, they are simply lying. The most important thing is that they don’t pass the legislation, everything else is a smokescreen. They say ‘negotiations, negotiations’ And continue with the legislation. They are tired of democracy, of having laws and courts, they say let’s sweep it away in a few weeks and continue our lives without democracy.”
On the differences between him and his partner in the opposition, Benny Gantz, he said: “We are all basically saying the same thing, there are differences in style. I am very much in favor of dialogue, but before they stop the legislation otherwise it is empty of content. Gantz is a good Zionist and his intentions are good, you have to be careful of traps, see that you are not Participant in a smokescreen. If they don’t stop legislation, it’s fraud.”
Regarding the various calls for refusal, Lapid said: “I am against any kind of refusal, but it is impossible not to understand it. Cyber people sit and say, ‘We will give a tool that can penetrate the phone of every citizen in Israel and we will give it to Ben Gabir and Smotrich’? It is clear that they will use it for the purposes of The officers are afraid that as soon as they land in any European capital they will be arrested because there will be no legal protection.”
Finally, he addressed the report that the American government refuses to meet Finance Minister Smotrich due to his statements about the village of Hvara: “The Americans do not want to see Smotrich and rightly so, whoever says that a village should be erased should not see it. There was a terrible attack, but whoever says that the Israeli response should be Erasing a village of innocents, so the Americans and Europeans don’t have to see him and he shouldn’t be a minister.”