Within a week, Finance Minister Yair Lapid has managed to open two fronts vis-à-vis his own electorate. His voters — who have barely had time to recover from the austerity budget with which he burdened them despite promises to the contrary — are finding out that Lapid is circling them from the right, as reflected in the much-discussed interview with him published in The New York Times [May 20], in which he outlined his vision of the diplomatic process.

To be exact, it’s not actually a vision, but rather a string of skeptical remarks revealing him as a ''[Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] Bibi clone'' (As described by Knesset member Omer Bar-Lev in an interview with Al-Monitor on May 21). He does not believe it’s possible to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians; he opposes the division of Jerusalem and a freeze on construction in the settlements; he calls Palestinian Chairman Abu Mazen “one of the founders of the Palestinian victimhood doctrine” and he is doubtful that the Palestinians even want a state. In fact, even Likud party hardliners like Knesset members Danny Danon and Tzipi Hotovely, the darlings of the settlers, would gladly have signed off on the text of the interview.

Immediately after the interview was published, Lapid understood that he had swerved too sharply to the right and tried to control the damage. On Monday, May 19, at the start of the weekly meeting of his Yesh Atid Party’s Knesset faction, he asked to clarify that “anyone who thinks it’s possible to reach a diplomatic agreement that doesn’t include two states for two people — is wrong." 

Is that so? Perhaps the mistake is that of the finance minister himself, who looks more like a pilot in the throes of a vertigo attack than the hero of the recent elections, head of a centrist party or, to be precise, a center-left party. The four or five mandates he got from the Likud in the elections don’t form part of his electoral base, which is deeply rooted in what is commonly referred to as “the white [Ashkenazi], well-established, Israeli tribe”. Most of those who fit this description flocked to Yesh Atid from the Kadima party and have long since crossed the psychological hurdle and come to accept the “two states for two people” formula. They will also be able to fully accept former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s far-reaching vision of dividing the country.