Reports say that Knesset member Yair Lapid, chair of the centrist Yesh Atid party, will be making an inconceivable statement today, June 1. For the first time in 12 years, a mortal whose name is not Benjamin Netanyahu will inform the president that he has the votes to install Israel’s next government. Almost as strange and unprecedented is the fact that Lapid himself will not head the government that he toiled to compose, handing the job instead to the leader of a different party, Yamina Chair Naftali Bennett.
Lapid has been working diligently for the past month to put together one of the most complex coalition governments in Israeli history, knowing that the only way to make it work is to let Bennett serve as prime minister for the first two years of the government’s term. Israelis are deeply divided over this impending change, which comes with an important caveat given the vagaries of recent Israeli history: It isn’t over until it’s over. The Netanyahu era, which seemed eternal, will only end when the last minister of the Bennett-Lapid government is sworn in by the Knesset, probably on June 8. Only then will Lapid and his coalition partners sigh in relief, along with at least half of Israel’s voting public. The other half will scream, demonstrate, curse, threaten and who knows, perhaps recreate the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol, Israel-style.
