“I chose to talk today about the topic that will have the most decisive impact on the economy of Israel and on Israeli society: the diplomatic process.” This was the opening line of a post Minister of Finance Yair Lapid published on his popular Facebook page on Dec. 8. In the text, which is no less than 1,500 words long, he explained the economic and other damages that Israel will incur in the absence of a diplomatic process, the threat such a situation would pose to the Jewish state — the annexation of 3.5 million Palestinians — and why he would back the prime minister and support a change in the coalition setup if that will be necessary.

This is one of the longest posts Lapid has written since he entered the government, and the only one dealing from beginning to end with the diplomatic process and the role of his party, Yesh Atid, in advancing the issue. Since the election campaign a year ago, Lapid has kept his distance from the Palestinian question, and when he did speak out on the topic he sounded like one of the members of the Likud's extreme right wing.

In an interview with The New York Times last May Yesh Atid's chairman explained why he is not sure it will be possible to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. He expressed opposition to the division of Jerusalem and the freezing of settlement construction, defined Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as “one of the founding fathers of the victimizing concept of the Palestinians” and raised doubts as to the Palestinians’ real wish for a state. Following this interview, Lapid had to provide explanations to his center-left voters who already had a hard time accepting his alliance with Naftali Bennett, HaBayit HaYehudi's leader, who became the political stronghold of the settlers and some of whose representatives are the most right-wing members of the Knesset.

Since then Lapid has come a long way, or more accurately, has significantly changed his positions. He frequently interviews with the foreign press regarding his commitment to the peace process. He deals with the negotiations in his speeches and even succeeds in getting some headlines and provoking the Israeli political system a bit, when he declares that he would support a change in the makeup of the coalition for the sake of the diplomatic process. Lapid essentially says that he would support the ousting of Bennett from the government, with whose help he succeeded in forcing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to compose a coalition without the ultra-Orthodox — in what has turned out to be the only “accomplishment” of this political alliance.