Yair Lapid

Yair Lapid was born on November 5, 1963, in Tel Aviv, to journalist and politician Yosef "Tommy" Lapid and author Shulamit Lapid.[1] His father was a Holocaust survivor born in former Yugoslavia to Hungarian-Jewish parents who became a prominent Israeli journalist and politician.[2] Tommy Lapid later served as a Knesset member, deputy prime minister, and minister of justice and headed the secular-liberal Shinui party from 1999 to 2006.[5][2] Shulamit Lapid was an author, playwright, and journalist who later chaired the Hebrew Writers Association; the Knesset biography identifies his sisters as the late Michal and Merav.[5]

Lapid grew up in Tel Aviv and London.[1] He attended the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium, struggled with learning disabilities, and left school without earning a bagrut matriculation certificate.[1] He later became a widely published author and a nationally recognized television presenter.

During his mandatory Israel Defense Forces service, Lapid initially served in the 500th Brigade of the Armored Corps.[1] An asthma attack during the 1982 Lebanon War, after he inhaled dust from a helicopter, led to his removal from the Armored Corps and reassignment as a military correspondent for the IDF weekly newspaper Bamahane.[1] The reassignment began a journalism path that continued after his military service.

After completing his military service, Lapid worked as a reporter for Maariv.[1] In 1988, at age 25, he became editor of a Tel Aviv local newspaper. He began writing a weekly column in 1991, hosted a Channel 1 program from 1994, and hosted a Channel 2 talk show from 1999 to 2012.[1] He also acted in films and commercials and wrote television series.[2]

Lapid wrote novels, children's books, newspaper columns, television scripts, and a play.[1] Sources differ on whether he published 11 or 12 books, with the Jewish Virtual Library and Knesset materials giving 11 and the American Jewish Committee giving 12.[1][2] His books included Memories After My Death, a tribute to his father that reached the top of the Israeli best-seller list.[5] TIME magazine named him among the world's 100 most influential people in 2013, the year of his electoral debut.[1]

Before entering politics, Lapid participated in ALEH, which assists people with special needs; Children at Risk, which works with children with autism; and the YRF association for disadvantaged youth. He also chaired the Miftan Tsfat Friends Association and taught citizenship at a school in Jaffa.[1] His daughter Yael is autistic and unable to communicate verbally with him, and while serving as finance minister he regularly reserved time each week to meet her.[6]

Lapid is married to journalist Lihi Lapid and has three children, one from his first marriage.[1] He has frequented Beit Daniel, a Reform synagogue in Tel Aviv. In 2006 he said, "All of us secular Jews are really Reform Jews — except we don't know it," and has been described as an advocate for progressive Judaism.[7]

On January 8, 2012, Lapid announced that he would leave professional journalism and enter politics.[1] By the end of that month, he had registered Yesh Atid, whose stated priorities included improving the economic position of the middle class, promoting a more equal distribution of civic obligations, advancing education, and seeking a diplomatic agreement with the Palestinians.[1] The party's name means "There Is a Future."[7]

The party's philosophy emphasized placing the middle class at the center of economic activity, equal sharing of civic burdens, rights and obligations, educational advancement, reducing government systems, and pursuing diplomatic progress.[5] Its 2013 list included ultra-Orthodox, secular, Reform, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Ethiopian, disabled, male, and female candidates.[7]

Yesh Atid exceeded pre-election expectations of 13 or 14 seats, winning 543,458 votes and 19 Knesset seats in January 2013.[1][5] It finished second and became the election's biggest surprise, having entered national politics barely a year earlier.[8][3]

Lapid agreed to join Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-led coalition only if ultra-Orthodox parties, including Shas and United Torah Judaism, were excluded.[7] Yesh Atid received the education, health, welfare, and science, technology and space portfolios in addition to Lapid's finance ministry.[5]

Following the 2013 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appointed Lapid minister of finance.[1] Lapid supported free-market reforms intended to protect middle-income households and advocated integrating ultra-Orthodox Israelis into the military and workforce to increase societal burden-sharing.[3]

In a 2013 policy presentation, Lapid said the government had advanced a bill to draft ultra-Orthodox citizens into the army. He projected that 70 percent of ultra-Orthodox young people would be drafted within three years and said 28,000 ultra-Orthodox people would receive notices allowing them to enter the labor market.[9] These were political goals and projections rather than verified outcomes.

Lapid also supported increased public transportation on Shabbat, civil marriage, and drafting yeshiva students into military service.[1] He advocated reducing what he characterized as excessive government spending on Orthodox yeshivas.[7] These positions made religion and state a persistent source of friction within the coalition.

Lapid also served on Israel's Security Cabinet during Operation Protective Edge, Israel's 2014 conflict with Gaza.[10] Netanyahu dismissed him as finance minister on December 2, 2014, alongside Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, precipitating early elections.[1]

In 2019, Lapid joined former IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and his Israeli Resilience party to form Kahol Lavan, or Blue and White, in an effort to defeat Benjamin Netanyahu.[1] In the April 2019 election, Kahol Lavan tied Likud at 35 seats each. In September 2019, it won 33 seats to Likud's 32, while in March 2020 Likud won 36 seats to Kahol Lavan's 33.[1] Neither bloc established a durable governing majority during this sequence of elections.

The partnership fractured when Gantz entered a power-sharing coalition with Netanyahu in 2020, a move Lapid refused to support.[1] Lapid remained in opposition and became opposition leader. Before the March 2021 election, Yesh Atid ran independently and won 17 seats.[1][8]

In the March 23, 2021 election, Yesh Atid won 17 seats and finished second to Likud's 30.[1] After Netanyahu failed to form a government, President Reuven Rivlin asked Lapid to do so.[8] Lapid and Naftali Bennett established a coalition spanning right-wing, centrist, and left-wing parties and including the United Arab List. It was the first Israeli governing coalition to include representatives of an Arab party.[11] The coalition was approved by a confidence vote of 60 to 59, with one abstention.[12]

Under the rotation agreement with Bennett, Bennett became prime minister while Lapid served as alternate prime minister and foreign minister in the 36th government.[13] Lapid was scheduled to assume the premiership in 2023, but the government's early collapse accelerated that timetable.[2]

As foreign minister, Lapid worked to strengthen and expand the Abraham Accords framework. He became the first Israeli minister to visit the United Arab Emirates, doing so in June 2021, and inaugurated Israel's embassy in Abu Dhabi.[2] In August 2021, he became the first Israeli minister to visit Morocco since 2003 and opened an Israeli mission in Rabat.[2][10] In September 2021, he opened Israel's embassy in Bahrain.[2]

In March 2022, Lapid hosted the inaugural Negev Summit at Sde Boker with the foreign ministers of the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Egypt.[2][4] He said the summit would become a permanent forum and described the emerging regional framework as based on progress, technology, religious tolerance, security, and intelligence cooperation.[4]

Lapid opposed efforts by the Biden administration to re-enter the Iran nuclear agreement while maintaining that disagreements with the United States should be addressed privately rather than through public confrontation.[2] He described the values shared by Israel and the United States by saying, "we share America's most basic, basic values — freedom, democracy, free markets, and constant search for peace."[2]

On June 20, 2022, Bennett and Lapid announced that they had exhausted their options for stabilizing the coalition and would move to dissolve the Knesset.[8] The Knesset was dissolved at the end of June, activating the rotation agreement and bringing Lapid to the premiership ahead of schedule.[2] He officially took office at midnight between June 30 and July 1, becoming Israel's fourteenth prime minister.[14]

Lapid headed a temporary caretaker administration pending the November 1 election.[2] On his first full day in office, he received a defense and intelligence briefing from Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar and discussed Israeli captives and the remains of soldiers held by Hamas.[14] He identified his immediate priorities as addressing the cost of living, confronting Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and opposing what he described as threats to Israel's democratic character.[14]

In September 2022, Lapid addressed the United Nations General Assembly and endorsed an arrangement based on two states for two peoples as the right course for Israel's security, economy, and future.[15] The speech drew criticism from opponents of his diplomatic approach, including an analysis that argued his conditions for Palestinian statehood were insufficiently stringent.[15]

In the November 1, 2022 election, Yesh Atid won 24 seats, its strongest result to that point, but Netanyahu's bloc secured 64 seats and returned to government.[16] Lapid conceded, instructed his office to prepare for an orderly transfer of power, and wished Netanyahu luck "for the sake of the Israeli people."[16] He subsequently returned to the role of opposition leader.

Lapid has consistently supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, presenting it as necessary to preserve Israel's Jewish and democratic character.[9] In a 2013 policy presentation, he argued that negotiations had to address fear, mistrust, trauma, hatred, and pain rather than only borders, maps, settlements, and security arrangements.[9] He summarized his approach by saying, "We're not looking for a happy marriage with the Palestinians, but for a divorce agreement we can live with."[1]

His proposed conditions have included separation from the Palestinians while retaining Israeli security control of the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria — keeping the Jordan Valley in Israeli hands, denying a right of return for Palestinian refugees, and maintaining Jerusalem as undivided under Israeli control.[2] He has opposed settlement construction in isolated areas away from the major blocs while supporting Israeli retention of the blocs themselves.[1] He has also supported the Western Wall agreement and LGBTQ+ rights.[8]

Lapid has been a vocal opponent of the BDS movement and has argued that it seeks to isolate Israel economically and politically.[1] On Iran, he has opposed an agreement that would permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons and has favored handling disagreements with allied governments through private diplomacy.[2]

Following the November 2022 election, Lapid returned to opposition leadership, while Yesh Atid held 24 seats in the outgoing Knesset.[16][1] By 2026, however, the party had fallen to between four and seven seats in several polls.[1]

On April 26, 2026, Lapid agreed to merge Yesh Atid's campaign with Naftali Bennett's Bennett 2026 operation into the joint B'Yachad, or "Together," slate. Bennett leads the list and Lapid holds the second position.[1] The alliance combined Yesh Atid's campaign financing and national organization with Bennett's candidacy in an effort to consolidate the political center ahead of the 2026 election.[1]

Lapid's political standing has been shaped by the speed of his rise. Yesh Atid won 19 seats and finished second in its first election, and within a decade Lapid had served as finance minister, foreign minister, alternate prime minister, and prime minister.[1][2] His foreign-ministerial record included opening or inaugurating Israeli diplomatic missions in Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, and Rabat and hosting the first Negev Summit.[2][10]

A July 2023 Jewish Policy Research survey of 3,748 respondents found that 34 percent of UK Jewish adults did not know whether they approved or disapproved of Lapid. Among those expressing a view, 34 percent disapproved.[17] The accompanying chart, which separately excluded neutral and "don't know" responses, recorded 26 percent of all respondents as approving and 23 percent as disapproving.[17]

In a JPR survey conducted from June 14 to July 14, 2024, Lapid had the highest net approval among the six Israeli politicians examined, at plus 12 percentage points, up from plus 5 in 2023.[18] The net-approval calculation excluded "don't know" responses and used a Lapid sample of 2,970. Among UK Jews expressing an opinion, 42 percent approved of Lapid, while 36 percent of all respondents selected "don't know" and 17 percent selected "neither approve nor disapprove."[18]

Lapid's support for a two-state solution, including his September 2022 United Nations address, has drawn sharp criticism from opponents on the Israeli right.[15] A Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs analysis argued that the conditions he associated with Palestinian statehood were insufficiently stringent and criticized his approach to terrorism and negotiations.[15]

His positions on religion and state—including civil marriage, public transportation on Shabbat, and mandatory military service for yeshiva students—have also been contested, particularly among ultra-Orthodox communities.[1] His 2013 insistence that ultra-Orthodox parties be excluded from the coalition further sharpened that divide.[7]

Sources classify Lapid differently across Israel's ideological spectrum. A 2024 JPR report places him at the centre-right, other sources describe Yesh Atid as centrist, and an academic thesis characterizes the party as center-left.[18][8][7] These labels represent interpretive disagreement rather than a single settled classification.