Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party fired back at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Tuesday evening, after Netanyahu in a television interview blamed Lapid, as well as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, for the rise in housing prices.
"Netanyahu is panicking, because he is a weak and failed prime minister who, during his six years in office, has led to a dramatic rise in the cost of living and housing prices have jumped more than 80%," said the party.
"Yesh Atid will continue to demonstrate leadership for the benefit of all the citizens of Israel, in the war against the cost of living, in education, welfare, health and in equal burden, and all will be done cleanly, without corruption, as is expected of public servants," it added.
In Tuesday’s interview on Channel 2, Netanyahu said that his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, as well as Lapid were to blame for the housing crisis in Israel, explaining that the prices of homes began to rise because “the Olmert government made an outrageous decision to stop building and planning in central Israel.”
Netanyahu then claimed that his government started to take care of the housing prices, but was handcuffed due to Lapid’s strong performance in the last elections, winning 19 seats and “forcing” Netanyahu to appoint him as Finance Minister.
At the same time, the Prime Minister stressed that he does not rule out including Lapid, or any other party, in a future coalition.
"I do not rule anybody out and I do not boycott others, but I do not think he will be Finance Minister again, if the public will do what I think it needs to do in this election," said Netanyahu, who called on the public to give the larger parties more seats so they will not be too dependent on what he called “atmosphere parties” such as Yesh Atid.
Lapid is so far centering his campaign on alleged “corruption” in other parties, and last week gave a speech in which he slammed this “corruption”.
“Corruption is ordering pistachio-flavored ice cream to your house at the expense of the public, Mr. Prime Minister, and transferring your garden furniture to your villa in Caesarea, and asking the public to pay for the water in your private pool, and fighting for the public to buy you a private plane,” was one of Lapid’s examples, referring to several expenditure reports published about the Prime Minister’s residence in recent years.
“Yesh Atid was the only party that voted against the private plane. The only one! You should have seen how the Prime Minister jumped when he found out that we are opposed to him having his own private jet,” said Lapid.
"Mr. Prime Minister, in a country where there are the greatest social disparities in the West, where the middle class cannot make ends meet, a private jet is corruption," he continued.