Throughout the entire coalition crisis surrounding the new Public Broadcasting Corporation — with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatening early elections over its launching — Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid was careful not to veer from the campaign discipline he decreed upon himself over the past year. He kept acting in an official manner on behalf of the entire nation at any cost.

While the chairman of the opposition, Isaac Herzog (Zionist Camp), contacted various political leaders in a hopeless effort to cobble together an alternative government and made a point of announcing what he was doing in media interviews, Lapid not only distanced himself from the initiative. He even expressed his reservations about it and dismissed its feasibility.

"I don't like political games," Lapid announced in a March 23 interview with the Walla! website at the height of the crisis. He said, "If the government falls, we will go to elections, and if the government doesn't fall, we won't go to elections. People here are playing the 'Let’s pretend' game, but the fact is that there is no possibility of presenting an alternative government. No government will be established here on the basis of a single vote from [Arab Joint List party member] Haneen Zoabi. I do not think that it would be legitimate for her to determine Israel's fate." Referring to the Knesset’s power balance, Lapid rejected attempts to create an alternative government, which would need Zoabi’s support to garner a majority.

These statements by Lapid are the byproduct of a precise, carefully orchestrated campaign strategy. Over the past few months, this campaign made him the leading contender for the prime minister's office, the one person who runs head to head against Netanyahu in all the polls. It is Lapid who threatens the current prime minister's political hegemony.