Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who heads the Knesset's Yesh Atid party, spoke Monday morning at the start of a party meeting, promising that Israel's next government will have just 18 ministers.
When asked about the appointment of a new deputy minister, Lapid said, "Yesh Atid did not break any of its principles. This government could not have been formed with 18 ministers, so we'll form the next one with 18 ministers. We have a tendency - we never give up on our principles."
"Six months ago, everyone explained to me that this government would not be formed. It was formed. Afterwards they said that it would not finish out its first month. It finished it. Then they explained that we won't reach the break. We reached it. So then they said that the budget won't pass. It passed. This government is here to stay."
"This is the right government for the people of Israel and the State of Israel. What we've done in six months, wasn't done here in six years. I will give you a summary of six months in six seconds: We passed the biggest budget reform in the state's history, the deficit dropped, unemployment dropped, the economy is now active again. We stopped coronavirus without a single day of lockdown. We were the first in the world to have 'booster' shots."
He continued, "The IDF is stronger than ever before. We're cooperating with Shabak (Israel Security Agency), the Mossad, and the police better than ever before. We raised the salaries of soldiers doing mandatory service. We launched the project to provide bomb shelters in the north and to set up an intelligence campus in the south. We improved, dramatically, the relationship with the US, with Europe, with Egypt and Jordan. We opened embassies and offices in Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain. Dozen of countries boycotted, from their own initiative, the anti-Semitic Durban Conference."
"We helped the Holocaust survivors, we raised the disability stipend. We launched a plan to integrate people with disabilities. We initiated a plan to reduce violence in Arab society. We are in first place in the world when it comes to the placement of fiber optics. Google is placing an underground cable to Israel. We are building two new hospitals. We are investing three billion shekel in constructing soccer fields and sports halls around Israel."
Lapid also claimed that if the current government had not been formed, Israel would have had a government which is "corrupt, criminal, undemocratic, divided, violent, and addicted to hate."
"Instead," he said, "We have a government which is optimistic, functional, and doing great things. We're doing everything together - with friendship, without stealing credits, out of an understanding that the State of Israel is more important, the shared good is more important than all of the differences between us."