[Dr. Aaron Lerner - IMRA:
On the one hand, Minister Yair Lapid's remarks against a settlement freeze
and the division of Jerusalem should serve to dash hopes among those who saw
him as the point man for pushing through such policies.
On the other hand, Mr. Lapid takes the profoundly dangerous position
supporting the immediate creation of an interim Palestinian state. If the
idea is to propose something with 100% certainty the other side will reject
it then at least there is a logic to it. But if that is not the case,
providing for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state anywhere in
our bedroom is incredibly dangerous.]
Fresh Israeli Face Plays Down Dimming of Political Star
By JODI RUDOREN The New York Times Published: May 19, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/world/middleeast/fresh-israeli-face-plays-down-political-decline.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
TEL AVIV — To say Yair Lapid has been on a roller coaster would be an
understatement. One recent headline blared about his “meteoric rise and
fall,” another said he had gone from “political darling to national whipping
boy.”
Mr. Lapid, a popular television host with no political experience, stunned
Israel in January by galvanizing the secular middle class around
kitchen-table concerns to make his new Yesh Atid Party the second largest in
Parliament. He was immediately crowned a kingmaker, and talked openly about
quickly replacing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But he ended up with the fraught job of finance minister, and facing a huge
deficit. As he presented an austerity budget this month with tax increases
and subsidy cuts that hit hard the people he claimed to represent, polls
showed his approval rating plummeting to 21 percent; fewer than half of
those who voted Yesh Atid (There is a Future), said they would pick the
party again. The protesters who had helped propel his political rise began
showing up outside his home on a cul-de-sac here.
So after months of communicating with the public only on Facebook, Mr. Lapid
has embarked on a media blitz, deploying his telegenic good looks and
sound-bite savvy. He summoned a series of journalists to an outdoor cafe
here on Thursday, wearing jeans and his trademark black T-shirt, and tried
to take the long view.
“I’m going to be bashed now, and be the beneficiary of this within, I don’t
know, a year or a year and a half,” Mr. Lapid, 49, said in his first
interview with an international news organization since his unexpected vault
into global headlines. He still hopes to succeed Mr. Netanyahu, but said, “I’m
in no hurry.”
Asked about the transition to politics, he called it “painful,” joking, “I
used to have so many opinions before I learned the facts.”
In an hourlong conversation, Mr. Lapid offered no criticism of Mr.
Netanyahu. He said he talks or exchanges text messages almost daily with
Naftali Bennett, the leader of the nationalist Jewish Home Party, with whom
he formed an alliance to block the ultra-Orthodox from joining Israel’s
governing coalition. He declined to discuss security issues like Iran.
An avowed centrist, Mr. Lapid nevertheless took a hard line on policy toward
the Palestinians, the issue that has defined Israeli politics for decades
but that was overshadowed by domestic concerns in the recent campaign. He
said that Israel should not change its policy on Israeli settlements in the
West Bank in order to revive the stalemated peace process, and that
Jerusalem should not serve as the capital of a future Palestinian state — an
essential part of Palestinian plans.
Mr. Lapid acknowledged that tens of thousands of Jews would someday be
uprooted from what he described as “remote settlements” in the West Bank,
something he called “heartbreaking.” But he said that problem should be set
aside for now, advocating the immediate creation of an interim Palestinian
state in parts of the West Bank where no Jews live, with final borders drawn
in perhaps three, four or five years. Palestinian leaders have roundly
rejected temporary borders.
While he described the two-state solution as “crucial” to preserving Israel
as a Jewish nation, he offered no hints of Israeli concessions that could
break the stalemate in the peace process. Instead, he repeatedly said he
hoped that Secretary of State John Kerry, who is scheduled to arrive here
next week for his fourth visit in two months, would “jump-start” it.
And he expressed extreme skepticism about the likelihood of reaching a deal
with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, saying, “He’s one
of the founding fathers of the victimizing concept of the Palestinians.”
He also questioned whether Palestinians truly wanted a state.
“Israelis want peace and security and Palestinians want peace and justice —
these are two very different things, and this is the real gap we have to
close,” he said. “More and more people are saying to themselves and to
others, this is not going to happen, all we have to do is some maintenance
and we’ll see. Some people think ‘we’ll see’ is ‘God will help us,’ which is
not a very tangible idea to me. Others say, ‘Some problems are not to be
solved,’ which is a very sad idea.
“I am saying what we need to do is something.”
Yet while Mr. Lapid vowed “to be proactive about this and do everything in
my power to contribute to the discourse,” he said he has not spoken with Mr.
Kerry since sitting with him at a state dinner during President Obama’s
visit to Jerusalem in March. Nor has he met with any Palestinians since
taking office.
He said he had found Mr. Netanyahu “more willing” and “more prepared than
people tend to think” to make peace with the Palestinians. Indeed, there was
little daylight between the two men’s positions. Mr. Lapid said he would not
stop the so-called “natural expansion” of settlements in the West Bank, nor
curtail the financial incentives offered Israelis to move there. He said the
large swaths of land known as East Jerusalem that Israel captured from
Jordan in the 1967 war and later annexed must stay Israeli because “we didn’t
come here for nothing.”
“Jerusalem is not a place, Jerusalem is an idea,” he said. “Jerusalem is the
capital of the Israeli state.”
Little known outside Israel a few months ago, Mr. Lapid in April ousted Mr.
Netanyahu from Time magazine’s list of the world’s 100 most influential
people, and last week topped the Jerusalem Post’s ranking of influential
Jews. (Mr. Netanyahu landed at No. 3.) But he has become the target of angry
Facebook campaigns and editorial cartoons, and is battered daily by
columnists across the spectrum.
“In no time at all, he has lost his major assets: the credibility and trust
of the Israeli voter,” Yossi Verter, the political writer for the
left-leaning daily Haaretz, wrote Friday. In Yediot Aharonot, Nahum Barnea
said, “The truth is that Lapid has taken too much upon himself.” And in the
right-leaning Jerusalem Post, Gil Hoffman observed, “The boxer who idolizes
Muhammad Ali has now become a political punching bag.”
One of the things that led some to turn on Mr. Lapid was the revelation that
he met in April with Sheldon Adelson, the ultraconservative financier who
backs Mr. Netanyahu and owns the Israel Hayom newspaper that loyally
supports him. Mr. Lapid said Thursday that Mr. Adelson requested the meeting
to ensure that the government would continue its matching grant of about $40
million to Birthright, a program that brings young Jews to Israel, and that
“there was nothing political about it.”
Throughout the interview, Mr. Lapid was charming, confident — and
controlling. Pressed on a certain point, he warned, “I’m so good at not
answering questions I don’t want to answer that we could go all night.” And
he refused to be photographed for this article at the cafe, insisting that
the photographer try Friday, when Mr. Lapid would don a jacket to meet with
the German foreign minister.
He was sanguine about his situation, rejecting the conventional wisdom that
he has made a series of missteps.
“Making hard choices always seems to be mistakes, but these are not
mistakes,” he said. “If you want to change a country, you’re going to be
bumped every now and then.”
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Ethan Bronner and Irit Pazner Garshowitz contributed reporting.
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