Yair Lapid

Overview

Yair Lapid is an Israeli politician and former journalist who served as the 14th prime minister of Israel in 2022. Founder of the centrist Yesh Atid party, he entered politics after a long career in newspapers and television. His rapid rise brought him into the Knesset and the finance ministry in 2013. He later joined Benny Gantz in an electoral alliance, helped assemble Naftali Bennett’s coalition in 2021, and served in that government as foreign minister and alternate prime minister. Bennett’s coalition agreement provided for Lapid to succeed him; its collapse brought the transfer forward to July 2022. Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded Lapid in December of that year.^{[3][5][12][14]}

Lapid’s political career has joined domestic reform with questions of Israeli security and regional diplomacy. Yesh Atid’s founding agenda emphasized middle-class economic conditions, education and shared civic obligations. In diplomacy, Lapid has supported separation from the Arabs of Gaza and of Judea and Samaria as a path toward a two-state settlement. He has paired that position with requirements that Israel retain freedom to act against attacks, control the Jordan Valley, keep Jerusalem undivided and reject demands to admit Arab refugees into Israel. As foreign minister and prime minister, he worked to deepen ties established through the Abraham Accords while warning about the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons program.^[1][13][14]

Early life

Lapid was born in Tel Aviv on November 5, 1963. His father, Yosef “Tommy” Lapid, was a journalist and politician; his mother, Shulamit Lapid, is an author. He grew up in Tel Aviv and London. In Tel Aviv, his family lived in Yad Eliyahu in a building known as the Journalists’ Residence, home to several prominent journalists. Lapid attended the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium but left without earning a bagrut certificate. Journalism was thus part of his family background well before it became his profession.^[3]

Lapid began mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces with the 500th Brigade of the Armored Corps. During the 1982 Lebanon War, an asthma attack led to his removal from the Armored Corps. He then became a military correspondent for the IDF weekly Bamahane. That assignment gave him an early reporting role within a national institution central to Israeli public life. After a marriage to Tamar Friedman that ended in divorce, Lapid moved to Los Angeles and worked in television. He subsequently returned to Israel and resumed his journalism career.^[3]

Career

Lapid developed a public profile through print journalism, television and writing. He wrote weekly columns for Maariv and Yediot Aharonot and hosted news programs and talk shows. In 1994 he began hosting a Friday evening talk show on Israel’s Channel 1. He later hosted a Channel 3 program and, from 1999 through 2012, a Channel 2 talk show. His television work also included the drama War Room, aired by Channel 2 in 2004. He began hosting the Friday news magazine Ulpan Shishi in January 2008, and the Cameri Theater staged his first play, The Right Age for Love, that year. He published books, including Memories After My Death, about his father. These varied roles made him a familiar national figure before his first election campaign.^[3][9]

On January 8, 2012, Lapid announced that he was leaving professional journalism for politics. He founded Yesh Atid, meaning “There Is a Future,” with a platform centered on middle-class economic conditions, education and shared civic obligations. Its appeal was rooted in domestic questions as well as dissatisfaction with established party alignments. Lapid rejected the suggestion that his proposals on civic obligations for Haredi Jews were an attempt to impose secularism on them. Yesh Atid won 19 seats in the 2013 election and became the second-largest party in the 19th Knesset. Lapid entered Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition as finance minister; Naftali Bennett also joined the government formed that March. Lapid has served as Yesh Atid’s chairman since 2013.^[3][5][9]

Before the 2019 election, Lapid and Benny Gantz, leader of the Israel Resilience Party, agreed on February 21 to run together as Blue and White. Their arrangement assigned Gantz the first two and a half years as prime minister if the alliance formed a government, with Lapid to serve for the remainder of the term. The joint ticket sought to challenge Netanyahu. The alliance later broke when Gantz moved toward participation in a Netanyahu-led government. Lapid opposed that decision, and his Yesh Atid faction split from Blue and White. Their disagreement marked a division over whether ending the electoral impasse justified governing with Netanyahu.^[14]

Lapid became opposition leader in 2020 and served in that role until April 2021. After Netanyahu failed to assemble support from the required 61 Knesset members, President Reuven Rivlin tasked Lapid with forming a government. Bennett expressed support for joining a broad coalition. Lapid and Bennett brought together eight parties across Israel’s political spectrum, including Ra’am, the first Israeli Arab party to join a governing coalition. On June 13, 2021, the 24th Knesset approved Bennett’s government by 60 votes to 59, with one abstention. Bennett became prime minister, while Lapid served as foreign minister and alternate prime minister under their planned rotation.^[12]

As foreign minister, Lapid pursued contacts with Arab states that had established or strengthened ties with Israel through the Abraham Accords. On September 17, 2021, he joined United States, Moroccan, Emirati and Bahraini representatives virtually for a ceremony marking the accords’ first anniversary. Later that month, he became the first Israeli cabinet member to visit Bahrain and opened Israel’s embassy in Manama. He also joined talks with the United States and the United Arab Emirates on religious coexistence, water and energy. In March 2022, he convened representatives of Israel, Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Egypt at Sde Boker in the Negev. The meeting demonstrated the breadth of regional diplomacy available after normalization.^[13]

When Bennett’s coalition collapsed in 2022, its rotation agreement brought Lapid to the premiership ahead of the originally planned 2023 transfer. During President Joe Biden’s July visit, Lapid argued that credible force was needed to stop the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons program. He asked Biden to convey Israel’s invitation to cooperate to leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Iraq. Lapid also joined the July 2022 I2U2 summit with leaders of India, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. His government and Biden’s administration launched a United States–Israel dialogue on critical technologies. Lapid’s term ended when Netanyahu returned as prime minister in December 2022.^[5][11][13]

Ideology and statements

Lapid describes diplomatic separation as a step toward a two-state political settlement. In a conversation with the Washington Institute, he presented separation as a practical course rather than an immediate substitute for security arrangements. His stated 2019 conditions gave those arrangements specific form: Israeli security would remain in Israeli hands, Israeli forces would retain freedom to enter areas where necessary to prevent attacks, and Israel would keep control of the Jordan Valley. He rejected demands to admit Arab refugees into Israel and insisted that Jerusalem remain Israel’s undivided capital. His position therefore combines support for a negotiated political division with continued Israeli control over the security measures he considers essential.^[1][14]

Lapid has also taken positions on religious pluralism within Israel. He welcomed recognition of non-Orthodox Jewish conversions and urged the Knesset to establish freedom of religion in law, opposing exclusive Orthodox institutional authority over conversion. That stance sits alongside his party’s call for shared civic obligations. Lapid has argued that proposals concerning Haredi participation in civic life need not amount to imposing secularism on Haredi Jews. His domestic program has consequently addressed both the distribution of obligations among citizens and the place of different Jewish religious communities in public institutions.^[3][5]

In June 2017, Lapid addressed Spanish lawmakers about public funding for organizations conducting political campaigns against Israel. He urged them to halt government funding for groups supporting boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns, arguing that Spanish taxpayers should not finance such activity. As opposition leader in June 2023, amid debate over judicial reform, he argued that vigorous public disagreement showed Israel’s democratic strength. He also urged Israeli leaders to consider the views of Jews outside Israel in that debate. His remarks treated democratic institutions and the relationship between Israel and Jewish communities abroad as matters of national importance.^[6][8][15]

Lapid’s diplomacy also included direct discussion with King Abdullah II of Jordan. Abdullah hosted him in the first public meeting of that kind between the Jordanian monarch and an Israeli prime minister in five years. Abdullah pressed Lapid to preserve Jerusalem’s legal and historical status quo and its Muslim and Christian holy sites, and presented Jordan’s proposal for a two-state settlement. They also discussed cooperation on water and energy. The meeting placed Lapid’s separation policy within a wider relationship involving border security, religious sites and practical cooperation.^[1][10]

Role in attacks or conflicts

Lapid’s roles in armed conflict have been those of a former IDF serviceman and later a civilian leader. His military service during the 1982 Lebanon War ended in a transfer from the Armored Corps after an asthma attack; he subsequently reported for Bamahane. As prime minister in 2022, he headed the government when Israel launched Operation Breaking Dawn against commanders of Islamic Jihad, a terrorist organization. Iron Dome intercepted hundreds of rockets during the fighting. The operation illustrated the security powers exercised by the government during his short premiership.^[3][5]

Lapid identified the Iranian regime’s nuclear weapons program as a major threat during Biden’s 2022 visit and argued that a credible threat of force was necessary to stop it. Following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, he framed his policy for Gaza around preventing another invasion. Hamas is a terrorist organization. In Washington on February 25, 2025, Lapid unveiled a postwar proposal called the Egyptian Solution. It called for Hamas’s removal from power and temporary Egyptian responsibility for Gaza, linking reconstruction to demilitarization and security on Israel’s southern border.^[4][13]

Lapid proposed that Egypt administer Gaza for eight to 15 years after ceasefire measures were implemented. Under his plan, Egypt would supervise demilitarization and prevent weapons smuggling. He also proposed international and regional repayment of Egypt’s $155 billion external debt as an incentive for it to assume that responsibility. Lapid presented the arrangement as a transitional means to secure Israel while changing Gaza’s governance after Hamas’s attack. Its proposed duration, financial incentive and assigned security duties distinguish it from a general call for postwar reconstruction.^[4]

Death or current status

Lapid remained active in Israeli politics after Netanyahu succeeded him in December 2022. He spoke as opposition leader during the 2023 judicial reform debate and presented the Egyptian Solution in that capacity in February 2025. He has continued to lead Yesh Atid, the party he founded before entering the Knesset. His later public work has included criticism of domestic proposals, advocacy for Israeli security conditions in diplomacy and efforts to shape Gaza’s postwar governance.^[4][8][11]

Legacy

Lapid’s path from newspaper columnist and television host to finance minister, foreign minister and prime minister made him a prominent figure in Israeli parliamentary politics. Yesh Atid’s 19-seat debut in 2013 gave a new centrist party immediate influence over government formation. His subsequent alliances showed both the possibilities and limits of coalition building: Blue and White united major opponents of Netanyahu before splitting over Gantz’s decision to govern with him, while Lapid’s partnership with Bennett produced an eight-party government spanning sharply different constituencies.^{[3][5][12][14]}

His time in government also connected domestic coalition politics to regional diplomacy. As foreign minister, Lapid helped develop contacts associated with the Abraham Accords, opened Israel’s embassy in Bahrain and convened a multilateral meeting in the Negev. As prime minister, he pressed Israel’s position on the Iranian regime’s nuclear program while maintaining diplomatic outreach to neighboring states. His later Gaza proposal carried forward a recurring theme of his public positions: political separation tied to enforceable Israeli security conditions. Those positions, alongside his advocacy of religious pluralism and debate over democratic reform, define the principal issues associated with his political career.^{[1][4][8][13][14]}