Yair Lapid
Yair LapidYonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Yesh Atid is outraged at the request of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to transfer additional funds via the Finance Committee to regional councils in Judea-Samaria, the party said in a statement on Monday.

"This is an election bribery - this is an inappropriate course of action in a democratic state," the party stated, asking the Knesset's Legal Advisory to intervene over the issue.

Budgetary transfers to the regional councils had been frozen for months by Finance Minister and Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid, who was sacked from his ministerial position last week and whose party left the coalition in a dramatic political move.

Lapid's dismissal has finally paved the way for tens of cash-strapped communities in the region to receive their funds, leaving leftists livid.

But the issue is not the only budgetary transfer finally on the table with Lapid's dismissal; the Finance Committee is expected to make decisions on dozens of requests for government funding Monday in Lapid's wake. 

Likud officials have attacked Lapid's term as Finance Minister in recent weeks, with several telling Arutz Sheva just before elections were announced that he "failed miserably as Finance Minister," especially regarding Yesh Atid's magnum opus for the 19th Knesset, the failed 0% VAT bill. 

The reversal also follows preliminary polls indicating the distinct lack of a future for Yesh Atid, as the party would lose more than half its seats, cutting down the number of Yesh Atid MKs from 19 to just nine, with another poll giving them just seven

But at least one Yesh Atid MK, MK Dov Lipman, has affirmed that Lapid's term as Finance Minister included a "long list of successes" and that the party is "determined" to win the next elections and to transfer funds to social causes - a move he claimed Netanyahu prevented in a targeted attack on the party. 

Lapid himself has said that Netanyahu, "instead of lowering the cost of living, transferring funds to social causes, improve the salaries of the middle class and helping the disadvantaged [. . .] would rather raise taxes and pay now shekels of the Israeli middle class into the haredi parties' pockets."