Yair Lapid urges deal to free all captives at once, pushes for Saudi normalization - interview

Until October 7, opposition leader Yair Lapid could always shut down any conversation questioning why Jews should live in Israel by recalling his father’s story as a child Holocaust survivor.

“I have great answers. Always have. My father’s ghetto Jewish history – and it used to kill the conversation in five minutes,” Lapid told The Jerusalem Post.

“It is not killing the conversation in five minutes anymore. The questions have become deeper and more bitter” as Israel faces an unprecedented barrage of external and internal existential threats, he said.

The silver-haired politician who heads the centrist Yesh Atid party spoke with the Post from his small Tel Aviv office a year into the country’s multi-front war against Iranian proxies – that began with the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7 and quickly expanded to include Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Tehran itself.

Lapid, who lost the premiership in November 2022, had already been in battle mode as one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s harshest and most vocal critics, warning against the internal threat to Israeli democracy posed by Netanyahu’s judicial reform program. October 7 added a new dimension to that battle, underscoring Lapid’s belief that the prime minister and his government posed a threat to Israel – and deepening the soul-searching societal crisis within the country.

“Even in 2023, during the judicial revolution or reform, if you asked me what the State of Israel would look like three or four years from now, I would say, ‘You know what? We’re going to win this struggle,’” Lapid said as he sat behind his wooden desk. “We had the basic idea of what the country was going to look like. Now we don’t.”

Moving forward, he said, “We don’t even know how we are going to feel, what kind of people we’re going to be.”

Young parents are telling me: ‘I’m not willing to raise children this way,” Lapid said, and he understands them.

He has experienced that same sentiment watching his daughter and six-month-old granddaughter race for shelter during a missile attack.

“We’re not going to live like this,” he said.

A self-described 'depressed optimist'

Describing himself as a “depressed optimist,” Lapid said that the depth of the problem has distressed – but not overwhelmed – him as he pushes for a new diplomatic and political reality for Israel.

“We now understand that we cannot keep on ignoring the more fundamental problems this country has, and I actually welcome the discourse that is asking: ‘What’s gonna make Israel more powerful?’”

A basic necessary first step, aside from the removal of the Netanyahu government, Lapid said, was ending the war in Gaza in exchange for a deal that would see the release of the remaining 101 hostages held in that enclave.

“Right now, the stoppage of the war is actually an Israeli interest,” he said. Initially, it was critical for Israel to fight the war, but that, he explained, has changed since July.

The IDF’s assassination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar last week, Lapid said, has only underscored the urgency he feels regarding the importance of concluding a hostage deal and ending the war.

“The elimination of Sinwar” sends “an important message to the Middle East: Whoever messes with us will die. It may take as long as it takes, but we will reach everyone who threatens us and eliminate them.”

It also opens a new opportunity for a deal.

Israel needs to do two things, he said. First, it must announce that it will offer significant financial incentives and a safe exit from Gaza to anyone who brings hostages. Second, it must simultaneously strive for a comprehensive hostage deal rather than the three-phased agreement put on the table in May. 

“The stage of gradual releases is over,’ he said. “We need a single deal that will release the living and return the bodies of the dead for burial.”

THE IDF should end the war before it has totally eliminated Hamas, he explained, “so that there can be a hostage deal because the captives “are dying.”

Israel can afford to take this step because it has already destroyed the basic components of Hamas’s military power – and vanquishing it completely could be a prolonged process, he said. That destruction should be a strategic priority for Israel, but he believes the IDF can afford to finish the process after the war ends and the hostages are home.

Lapid dismissed the argument that Hamas cannot be annihilated because ideas cannot be destroyed. Bad ideas can be vanquished, he said.

“Nazism was a bad idea, and therefore we have eliminated it... Communism was a terrible idea, at least the Russian concept, and the world has succeeded in eliminating this idea. Hamas is a horrible idea. It should be eliminated.

“But those of us who live in the real world understand it’s going to take a long time,” he added.

One of the first and most critical steps, he said, was addressing the “day after” plan for Gaza in a way that could solicit rather than discourage regional and international cooperation.

Discussing Gaza's 'day after'

“We need to start discussing what the ‘day after’ in Gaza looks like,” so that Hamas does not return to areas where it has been eliminated.

“Vacuums in nature are filled with something. And right now the something is Hamas,” he said. It needs to be replaced with some sort of international governing body that could include regional players such as the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the Egyptians, as well as a “‘symbolic’ branch of the Palestinian Authority, nothing, nothing more than that.”

“You take this structure” and “implement it into Gaza. It’s a process. It’s not going to happen in a day.” 

The IDF would have to retain control of the critical Philadelphia security corridor and the Rafah crossing, as well as have the ability to re-enter Gaza for security reasons when needed. It would be an arrangement similar to that which exists in Areas A and B of the West Bank, he explained.

LAPID IS among those Israelis who, even in the aftermath of October 7, are still willing to give a nod in the direction of Palestinian statehood and a two-state resolution to the conflict.

As prime minister in 2022, Lapid recalled, he stood at the podium in the United Nations General Assembly and stated: “An agreement with the Palestinians, based on two states for two peoples, is the right thing for Israel’s security, for Israel’s economy, and for the future of our children. Peace is not a compromise. It is the most courageous decision we can make.”

Even now, he said, “I still do believe in the two-state solution, but not the state they’re talking about.” A Palestinian state has to be “a peaceful one and a peace-seeking one.” He added, “The ‘burden of proof’ is not on us but on them.

“We are saying that we are willing to consider the possibility, even though we have learned the bitter lesson that we have learned” on October 7, he said.

Such a step would need to include a rehabilitated PA to ensure that a Palestinian state would not turn into yet another terror state, he said.

The time frame will also be protracted, Lapid explained, given that for at least five or six years, “it’s not possible to have a Palestinian state.”

“We were just attacked in the most vicious way by Palestinians,” he said as he referenced the October 7 attack in which over 1,200 people were killed and another 251 seized as hostages. PA President Mahmoud Abbas “has declined even now to condemn it,” Lapid pointed out.

ISRAEL’S FOCUS, he explained, has to be on self-preservation.

“The next political issue will be the ability of the State of Israel to regain the confidence that we will not be killed [upon] waking up in the morning. It’s just more important right now than the self-recognition or world recognition of the Palestinian state.

Lapid preferred to focus on the importance of “separating from the Palestinians,” but said that the option for Palestinian statehood had to be on the table so that Israel could move forward with the process of normalization with Saudi Arabia, a step essential to combating Iran and its proxies.

“You have to have some sort of a vague goodwill to[ward] the concept, and then you can start working with the Saudis and the Emirates,” he said.

“We have a regional problem and it needs a regional solution.” 

The Saudi deal is more of a conceptual regional framework that involves the United States and the Abraham Accords countries. “This is the right coalition to deal with the hegemonic wishes of the Iranians and the nuclear problem. So this is where we should go,” he said.

Netanyahu, Lapid said, should have moved on this issue, but as in so many other instances, he has not done so out of concern that it would break up his far-Right coalition.

THE CURRENT government, Lapid contended, was not going to move forward with a hostage deal or with a regional peace agreement, and therefore, replacing it was a pressing strategic necessity.

Already on October 7, Lapid reached out to Netanyahu and said he would be willing to enter the government if the prime minister removed the two far-Right parties, Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit, from the governing coalition. However, not only did Netanyahu not consider the offer, he did not even use it as leverage to keep his far-Right partners in check, Lapid said.

“He couldn’t care less and was not interested in the possibility – even remotely.”

Contrary to general estimations, United Right chairman MK Gideon Sa’ar’s decision to reenter the government with his four MKs in September did not give the government more breathing room, Lapid said. He explained that the government’s problems were in the “real world” and could not be swept away by political maneuvering.

Sa’ar’s move is widely believed to have strengthened Netanyahu’s coalition, as it both raised its majority from 64 to 68 MKs and neutralized the threat by Otzma Yehudit Chairman and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to bring down the government with his six MKs.

“The two basic problems of this government are actually not political,” Lapid said, referring to the ultra-Orthodox parties’ attempt to continue evading IDF service and to the upcoming 2025 budget – which is expected to include heavy tax increases.

“The fact that Gideon Sa’ar and three guys came in doesn’t mean you have the money you didn’t have before... nor the fingers [votes] for this absurdity of releasing tens of thousands of future soldiers [from service],” Lapid said.

When discussions on a new haredi draft bill began, the IDF said it was lacking some 10,000 soldiers. Add to that an additional 11,000 soldiers who have been injured in the war, alongside 750 killed, and you have a need for some 22,000 soldiers. There is no manpower pool of this size to recruit from other than military-age ultra-Orthodox men, Lapid said.

“You cannot solve this with political maneuvering because it is happening in the real world... the real world in which money doesn’t grow on trees, and the real world in which there are no other 18-year-olds who are healthy and can be part of the existential effort we are engaged in.”

Asked why the government will not succeed in at least delaying treatment of these problems, Lapid said that “weirdly enough, the pressure on the [draft] dodging bill is not coming from Israeli society... but from the ultra-Orthodox [establishment],” such as United Torah Judaism Chairman Yitzhak Goldknopf threatening not to support the 2025 budget if yeshiva students do not receive legal exemptions from IDF service.

In addition, politics isn’t mathematics, and things can change quickly, Lapid said. “I understand why journalists want me to say that by the end of 2024... we might go into an election,” but “it’s a fluid world.”

DURING THE struggle over the government’s controversial judicial reforms in 2023, no one could have imagined where Israel would be a year later, and with the state’s demographic shifting steadily toward religious conservatism and right-wing militarism, Lapid was asked whether he was fighting a lost cause.

“I do not accept the premise,” he answered.

“I think that what is happening now... is that we now understand that we cannot keep on ignoring the more fundamental problems this country has.”

He proposed considering which version of Israel would be stronger – a religious, bigoted country or a liberal democracy with a technological inclination. While he understood the instinct for revenge, he said that “The only smart option is the one that we are offering,” and that a majority of Israelis acknowledged this.

Lapid explained that rather than the old Israeli Right vs Left on issues of national security, the new political divide was between liberals and religious conservatives, and according to polls, there were “way more” of the former – including figures who are right-wing on national security issues, such as Yisrael Beytenu Chairman MK Avigdor Liberman and former prime minister Naftali Bennett.

“We don’t know where Israel is going, but if we don’t have a death wish... we cannot go the Ben-Gvir-Smotrich route,” Lapid said.

“If we want to be radical and deplorable, then Yemen and Syria are so much better than us at this. We are better than them at being smart and technological.”

According to Lapid, the basic idea of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state is being challenged by people who believe that Israel can no longer be both Jewish and democratic, and have chosen the former over the latter. But he thought that most Israelis recognized that Israel’s greatest threat, even in wartime, was internal.

Another example of the path on which the government was leading the country was judicial reform, the threat of which still exists, he said, noting Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s ongoing attempt to “sabotage” the election of a permanent Supreme Court Chief Justice.

Israel would not be out of the woods of the judicial reform as long as there are “neo-fascist” parties in government, Lapid concluded.

HE ALSO blamed Netanyahu and his government for the current tensions with France and the Biden administration, including with the American people.

“We have a real, huge crisis even with the next generation of Jews [in the United States], let alone the next generation of intellectuals,” he said, adding: “I know it is very fashionable to look down at elites these days, but eventually [the] elites are the ones who are carving the paths countries are taking.”

Lapid said, “This has come from years of negligence,” as well as a preference by ministers for “talk-backs” and meme-style comments over dialogue.

Statements by government ministers such as Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli – who publicly threw his support behind Republican presidential contender Donald Trump – have not helped.“I am reminding you, he is the one in charge of the Diaspora,” Lapid said. 

Lapid was careful, when speaking of Trump and Democratic presidential contender Vice President Kamala Harris, to describe both of them as supportive of Israel.

“These are two very pro-Israeli candidates,” he said, recalling Trump’s historic relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018. “I sat in the event in which the American Embassy was opened in Jerusalem – I had tears in my eyes.”

Harris, he said, is part of a US administration that has “supported Israel in this war in ways that are unprecedented.” 

Israel-US relations have to be handled wisely and in a long-term strategic manner, something that this government is not capable of doing, Lapid said.

Instead, Netanyahu and his ministers have been airing video clips aimed against the US president,  even though the Biden administration has sent Israel $17 billion in military aid.

“An American friend who is a high-ranked officer of this [Biden’s] government, told me, ‘It might not be a lot of money for you guys, but for us in the US, it is considered a lot of money,” Lapid said.

“We have the fundamentals to maintain this friendship, but we have a government who’s doing nothing about it,” he added.

Lapid said he did not believe that Israel was in danger of losing US military support in the short term.

The US, he said, instinctively sees Israel as “an asset and not a burden,” and he believes that sentiment has not disappeared, “but I am hearing doubts that I did not hear before. It can be reversed because the basic sympathy is there, it’s part of American culture, but not with this [Netanyahu’s] government,” Lapid said.

THE CRISIS with France was born of a similar form of neglect, he explained. “You don’t wake up in the morning” and discover that French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for an arms embargo against Israel, this is something that the Israeli government should have known about in advance and worked to thwart, through intelligence and dialogue.

“You are talking to him, you are reminding him of the bond you have with him,” Lapid said, stressing that ties with France can be repaired. “You just have to be smart and non-populist about it,” he said, rather than engaging in demagoguery.

“They [the Israeli government] are not doing this because they are so addicted to the immediate response of the political base that they are not capable anymore of just doing the job.”

On the walls of Lapid’s office hang two photographs that remind him of the complexity of Israeli politics and how time changes the lens through which historical figures are viewed.One is of Israel’s first prime minister David Ben-Gurion of the Mapai party which eventually became the Labor party; and the other is of the country’s sixth prime minister Menachem Begin who was the founder of the Likud party.

“We know one thing,” Lapid said as he stood by their photos to better explain his relationship to the two men. “Neither of these gentlemen would have a political place today because Ben-Gurion was way too militaristic for today’s Israeli Left. He wouldn’t pass the primaries.”

Pointing to Ben-Gurion, Lapid said, “he’s too hawkish and too biblical, he is the one who said the Bible is the mandate we have over this country. So he was too hawkish and biblical for the Israeli Left, and he was way too democratic for Likud today. So he [Begin] is not passing Likud these days and he [Ben-Gurion] is not passing Labor these days. So they came here for political asylum,” he jokes.

“They will not be accepted by the political establishments of their own parties,” but they will be accepted by the Israeli public, he said.

Lapid noted that his centrist Yesh Atid party, which he founded in 2012, sits right in the middle, in the narrow space between the two men.

A return to the premier's seat?

Lapid affirmed that he still has his sights set on the premiership.

“There are so many moving particles on the way that you can never tell,” he said, as he slipped his speech into the royal “we.” “We want to go back there,” he said. 

Among the issues he would tackle upon his return, he said, would be rehabilitating the economy and reorienting it “toward the working people.”

Referring to his term as 14th prime minister (from 1 July to 29 December 2022) Lapid said: “I think we did a good job for the kind of challenges we have: religion and state, Palestinians, and relations with the United States.”