Yesh Atid chairperson Yair Lapid on Wednesday struck at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's comments the day before, in which he criticized Labor-Hatnua heads Yitzhak Herzog and Tzipi Livni for saying the Kotel (Western Wall) will stay Israeli while offering to give up the surrounding land.
"How will it stay in our hands? Swallowed up amid Palestinian territory? And how will we reach it? In a military convoy? In APCs (armored personnel carriers)? We didn't return to the Kotel after 2,000 years to reach it in APCs," said Netanyahu.
Responding to Netanyahu, Lapid said Wednesday "Mr. Prime Minister, in exactly what decade are you stuck in? It's a good thing you didn't say you won't let them return the British Mandate, you won't agree that (Gamal Abdel) Nasser close the Tiran Straits, that you will personally prevent the appointment of Golda Meir to Foreign Minister."
How exactly the imminent threat of violence posed by an Israeli withdrawal from eastern Jerusalem is somehow "outdated" was never fully explained by Lapid.
His "historical" comments to dismiss danger bring to mind those made by former President Shimon Peres in January, when he called on Jews to live under the Palestinian Authority (PA), saying "what's this fear? ...The fear should have been in 1948 when we didn't have a cannon, tank or plane against seven armies." The comments came on the background of Israel Security Agency figures showing a skyrocketing of terror attacks on Jews in PA-controlled regions.
Lapid also referenced Netanyahu's decision to sack him and Hatnua head Tzipi Livni over what he termed their "putsch" attempt to replace him from within the coalition, leading to the snap elections in March.
"Even if Netanyahu decided that he can't work with us anymore, all he had to do was wait a month - a month! - to pass a budget, to let the public know that ahead of all small politics the government cares about the middle class and the weaker social layers, and then go to elections," said Lapid.
According to Lapid, Netanyahu runs a campaign of scare tactics, claiming he was told by his advisers to "frighten them with Iran, frighten them with Hamas, frighten them with Hezbollah, frighten them with the left, Europe and America, and then promise them that you are the only one who can save them from the fears you yourself aroused."