Yesh Atid Chairman, MK Yair Lapid, made a special statement to the media this evening (Thursday), after receiving the mandate from President Reuven Rivlin.
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""Yesterday, the President of the State gave me the mandate to try to form a government in Israel. I told the President: 'An Israeli unity government is not a compromise – it is a goal.' This is what the country needs now.
And as if to prove it. Prime Minister Netanyahu immediately went on the air. Again slandering, again divisive. Attacking the lowest possible level. Naftali, Gideon, the left, me. A style that shames the position and the person.
That's exactly what we want to change. We've been angry enough, we've hated enough, we've fought enough. Israel is a wounded country. It needs peace, it needs unity, it needs - it must! - a functioning government.
Israel is tired of quarreling. The people of Israel look at their politicians and ask themselves - when will they stop quarreling and go work for us? And my answer is: now.
Now we need a unity government. Because we are here together. We have one destiny and we do not hate each other. We do not agree on everything, but these are disagreements for heaven's sake and therefore they will eventually exist.
This will be a complex government, but it will have a simple goal: to get us out of the crisis. From the Corona crisis, from the economic crisis, from the political crisis, especially from the crisis within us, within the people of Israel.
We will not be able to solve any of our problems if we continue to fight. Internal conflicts weaken us. They hold us back and make it difficult for us to deal with security challenges, advance the economy and education.
If we succeed in forming a government, it will also behave differently towards the opposition. We will not slander, we will not belittle, we will respect them, we will deal with the problems of those who did not vote for us to the best of our ability.
Naftali Bennett rightly said yesterday that a unity government would prevent a fifth election - but that's only part of the story. Its main goal, its main challenge, will be to start something different here: clean, decent, functioning.
We are trying to create an Israeli alliance here of decent people, who are also patriots. I believe in the good intentions of my future partners - Naftali and Benny, Gideon and Merav, Yvette and Nitzan.
They are different people with different opinions, but just because someone disagrees with you doesn't make them an enemy. They all love this country from the bottom of their hearts. They want to build, and fix, and create collaborations that we haven't seen here in many years.
We all have a past. Each of us carries around five quotes that we regret. Things we shouldn't have said. Opinions we've changed. I have no intention of getting into that. Whoever wants to get stuck in the past, that's their problem.
We are not here to fight for the past, but for the future. Whoever wants to fight and be angry, let them fight and be angry. We prefer to go to work for the citizens of Israel.
To build school classrooms for our children, to repair relations between ultra-Orthodox and secular people, to strengthen the health system, to promote Arab society together with its elected officials, to reduce social gaps.
"From my first day in politics, this has been my soul's aspiration, this is my life's mission: finding the common good. Pulling Israeli society away from disagreement and toward consensus. Today we are taking another step in this direction, and we are doing it together.".
