Yair Lapid
Yair LapidYoav Dudkevich/TPS

Opposition leader Yair Lapid spoke on Monday evening in a Zoom call with about 900 participants on the subject of the Draft Law, and said that he is in favor of a unity government.

"The right way is not to give up, but on the contrary, to enact a correct, egalitarian and fair Draft Law, and then start working together on its implementation," Lapid said, adding that "it won't happen overnight, it will be gradual, but it needs to be handled the way a smart country handles a volatile social problem."

He noted that "on the other hand, there are values that must not be given up. In the State of Israel, every citizen has rights, but he also has duties."

Lapid further said during the Zoom call, "This government is a government that is nearing its end. We should not take our eyes off the goal - the goal is to topple this terrible government, and establish a good unity government without extremists that will work for the citizens of Israel."

On Sunday, in an interview on Galei Tzahal (IDF Radio), Lapid commented on the Draft Law and said, "When you look at the protest and what is happening in Israeli society, these are things that Yesh Atid has been talking about since 2012 – sharing the burden, standing together against the central problems of our lives, whether it be in Judea and Samaria, Jews-Arabs, or equality in the burden in the face of the question of what to do if there is a growing public of haredi people who need to be drafted to the army and go to work."

He later commented on the state of his party in the polls, saying, "I'm not concerned but I need to improve." Lapid acknowledged that there is a problem "with something in the message we are explaining to the public."

In addition, Lapid attacked National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and said, "He is not the solution and he is making the problem worse. This is a person whose only experience in this field is that he has been arrested many times, and he is being placed in charged in a period of complete crisis that requires an orderly horizontal and inter-ministerial treatment."

"Instead, he is fueling the fire. When we finally arranged an emergency discussion on the issue of crime in Arab society on what to do and how to convene all the professionals - he left in the middle because he was running to be interviewed on television. This is an example of the way he treats the issue. This man is a mega propaganda attack and a mega attack on our ability to fix the situation," concluded Lapid.