Yair Lapid
Yair LapidMiriam Alster/Flash 90

Yesh Atid Chairman Yair Lapid took more jabs at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday, during a professional conference for the Association of Insurance Agents.

"Next to Netanyahu, you must not stand out," Lapid stated. "That's what happened with [Kulanu Chairman Moshe] Kahlon, that's what happened with Gideon Sa'ar, with Benny Begin, with [Dan] Meridor, with [Yisrael Beytenu Chairman Avigdor] Liberman, with [Jewish Home Chairman Naftali] Bennett."

"That's because he is interested in only one thing: staying in power," he added. 

"When I was invited to speak at this conference, I was still finance minister," he reflected. "And I wanted to be the Minister of Finance."

"Everyone warned me that Netanyahu gave me the finance portfolio to trip me up," he continued. "We came to work for the State of Israel, and we came to change the life of every citizen of Israel, and it's not something we do from the Strategic Affairs division." 

"We deliberately took all the difficult cases," he added, citing the health portfolio ("Before us there was no Health Minister at all!") and the welfare portfolio, "which everyone traditionally fails." 

Lapid then, once again, accused Netanyahu of deliberately sinking his proposal for the 2015 budget, as a means of staying in power. 

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. 

Lapid has stressed on multiple occasions, however, that any lack of success from his party is due to a specific agenda by Netanyahu against him, a claim other Yesh Atid MKs have supported. 

But the remarks do not seem to be enough to ensure a future for Yesh Atid, which will likely fall from 19 seats in the current Knesset to anywhere between eight and nine seats