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Israeli Finance Minister Lapid On Probation

Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid seeks to please the right-wing electorate, in preparation for his long-term ambition: to become prime minister.  
Israel's new Finance Minister Yair Lapid arrives for the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem April 7, 2013. Lapid has decided that after 2014 Israel will return to annual budgets, rather than the dual-year budgets that have been approved in recent years, the ministry said on Sunday. Lapid made the decision in coordination with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. REUTERS/Uriel Sinai/Pool (JERUSALEM - Tags: POLITICS BUSINESS) - RTXYBOO
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Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s diplomatic doctrine, revealed in a comprehensive interview that he gave to The New York Times (May 20), surprised many in Israel. Voters and commentators alike. How is it possible that our Yair, that handsome, bushy-haired boy from the posh Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Aviv, the knight in shining armor who rode up on a white horse to subdue the government of those right-wing dragons Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu and former Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman, the Tel Aviv bubble’s own envoy in Jerusalem — how is it possible that he came to adopt the rhetoric of the preachers on the right? For anyone who has forgotten, Lapid spoke to Jodi Rudoren of The New York Times about his opposition to freezing construction in the territories as a precondition for renewing the negotiations, about how it is impossible to divide Jerusalem, about Palestinian Chairman Abu Mazen as “one of the founding fathers of the victimizing concept of the Palestinians,” etc., etc.

This was no slip of the tongue. Lapid has a tendency to appease his listeners. He is a good man, in the most positive sense of the term. Unlike his father, the late journalist and politician Tommy Lapid, Lapid is not argumentative. He doesn’t enjoy being pugnacious. He likes it when people like him. So one would expect that in an interview with The New York Times his slips of the tongue would be the opposite of what he actually said. After all, it’s The Times, for God’s sake, and they would love to hear about how he longs for peace and how he is willing to accept former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's peace proposals immediately. They would love to hear the saccharine, conciliatory remarks he hopes to whisper into Abu Mazen’s ear if the Palestinian leader would only agree to walk with him into the sunset.

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