The 14th prime minister of Israel, a committed centrist. He describes himself as "Binyamin Netanyahu's fiercest political rival". He has been sharply critical of the way parts of the situation in Gaza have been conducted and of the way the Netanyahu government has failed to get a grip on settler violence in the West Bank. During his short term as prime minister in 2022, he called for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
On April 26th 2026 Lapid and Naftali Bennett, a right-winger, announced they were merging their parties under Bennett's leadership into a new party called "Together". The merger risks alienating more ideological supporters on both sides and the sum may be less than its parts, but it seeks to lessen the fragmentation of the anti-Netanyahu camp. Together will focus on the responsibility of Netanyahu's coalition for the failures that led to the Hamas attacks of October 2023 and on the exemption of ultra-Orthodox allies' supporters from military service.
Lapid backed the American-Israeli war on Iran that began on February 28th 2026, saying the operation was "existential, not political" and calling it "the rarest of things in 21st-century conflicts: a just war". He said an overwhelming consensus existed across Israel's political spectrum in support of the strikes. He praised Donald Trump for "rare leadership and courage". He argued that the Iranian regime was not negotiating in good faith but was buying time to enrich uranium and build ballistic missiles. He called the elimination of Ali Khamenei "justified, as befits the murderous dictator that he was" and urged Iranians to find "their own Nelson Mandela or Lech Walesa" to lead them to freedom. In the first hours of the war he sent a message in Persian to the Iranian people, saying: "You are not our enemies."
Death is nature's way of saying `Howdy'.