Quick Facts
Born:
November 5, 1963, Tel Aviv, Israel (age 61)
Title / Office:
prime minister (2022-2022), Israel
Notable Family Members:
father Yosef Lapid

Yair Lapid (born November 5, 1963, Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli journalist, television personality, and politician who served briefly as prime minister (July–December 2022). He also served as minister of finance (2013–14) and minister of foreign affairs (2021–22).

Lapid was raised in Tel Aviv. His mother, Shulamit Lapid, was a writer, and his father, Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, was a journalist and commentator known for his outspoken support of secularism and his criticism of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox political parties; Yosef later entered politics as the head of the centrist party Shinui (“Change”) and served as minister of justice and deputy prime minister (2003–04).

Media career

Yair Lapid first worked as a reporter while serving in the military, writing articles for a magazine published by the Israel Defense Forces. In 1991 he began to write a column for Maariv, the daily newspaper where his father was a columnist and editor. After several years at Maariv, Lapid’s column moved to the higher-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth. During this period Lapid also tried songwriting, screenwriting, and acting, with some success, and dabbled in amateur boxing. In 1994 Lapid began his television career as the anchor of an evening news program. Over the years that followed, he hosted a series of talk shows. He also wrote several novels (mostly thrillers) and the script for a television drama series. In 2008 he became the anchor of Ulpan Shishi (“Friday Studio”), a highly rated newsmagazine.

Political career

In January 2012 Lapid left broadcasting to enter politics, forming his own centrist party, Yesh Atid (“There Is a Future”). The party platform focused on the economic concerns of the Israeli middle class, which had emerged as a major political force during a wave of socioeconomic protests in the summer of 2011. While campaigning during the run-up for the January 2013 general elections, Lapid vowed to reduce housing costs, reform the education system, and institute policies that would help small businesses. He also called for the gradual phasing out of rules that exempted Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community from military service, and he proposed new measures to limit what he characterized as the disproportionate influence of minority parties (such as the ultra-Orthodox and West Bank settler parties) in Israeli politics. However, his campaign rhetoric remained inclusive, and he eschewed the blunt criticism of ultra-Orthodox parties that had been his father’s political signature. Unique among the major political parties in the country, Yesh Atid remained vague on issues relating to national security and negotiations with the Palestinians, although it was generally understood that Lapid favoured a return to negotiations.

Yesh Atid outperformed expectations in elections in 2013, winning 19 seats in the Knesset—the second largest number of seats, after those won by the LikudYisrael Beiteinu alliance. After weeks of negotiations, Yesh Atid joined the governing coalition led by Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, and Lapid took the portfolio of finance. Citing friction within the governing coalition, Prime Minister Netanyahu dismissed Lapid as finance minister in December 2014.

Early elections were held in 2015. Yesh Atid lost seven seats and became the fourth largest party in the Knesset. Lapid responded to the results positively, however, saying that the party’s performance in the elections indicated that “Yesh Atid is here to stay.” Throughout the next several years, he remained a key figure in the opposition. He stirred controversy in 2018 when Israeli police recommended that Netanyahu be indicted on corruption charges and it was revealed that Lapid was a key witness in one of the cases.

As the April 2019 elections approached, Lapid and his Yesh Atid party were once again poised for a solid performance but were still too weak to challenge Netanyahu. Meanwhile, Benny Gantz, a political newcomer but a well-known general of the Israel Defense Forces, emerged as Netanyahu’s most viable challenger. Yesh Atid joined a last-minute electoral alliance with Gantz’s Israel Resilience Party to form Blue and White, a list that included a powerhouse of well-known figures from Israel’s defense establishment. According to the alliance agreement, the post of prime minister would rotate between Gantz and Lapid. While Blue and White tied Netanyahu’s Likud with 35 seats, no coalition could be formed. A new set of elections was held in September, and again no coalition could be formed, which sent Israel to a third set of elections, held in March 2020. Those elections likewise presented no clear winner, but the outbreak of COVID-19 caused Gantz to accede to an emergency unity government under Netanyahu’s leadership. Nearly half of Blue and White, including Lapid, split with Gantz and entered the opposition under the name Yesh Atid-Telem.

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The Bennett-Lapid government

The split with Gantz ultimately provided Lapid the opportunity to form a coalition. Yesh Atid ran separately from Blue and White in the elections of March 2021 and outperformed Gantz’s party by far. Despite coming in a distant second to Likud, Lapid was able to form a broad coalition that was united by the aim of replacing Netanyahu. The coalition agreement allowed Naftali Bennett to serve as prime minister for the first half of the term but allowed Lapid to take over the position if the coalition were to collapse prematurely. In June 2022, defections and mounting opposition to the coalition led Bennett and Lapid to call early elections, and Lapid took the reins as prime minister in the interim.

Although functioning in a caretaker capacity, Lapid wasted no time putting his leadership style on display. Just days into his premiership, he launched a monthlong incursion into the Gaza Strip that targeted militants of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. His address to the UN General Assembly in September took a hard stance on Iran’s nuclear program, called for a two-state solution with the Palestinians, and hailed Palestinian citizens of Israel as integral members of Israeli society. Weeks before the November elections, a tentative deal was announced that would allow Lebanon to extract natural gas from a disputed area. Lapid argued that the deal would enhance Israeli security and reduce Lebanon’s reliance on Iranian aid, but opponents accused Lapid of ceding maritime territory.

In November, his eventful few months as prime minister were met with a significant increase to his party’s seats. The electorate nonetheless favoured Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc, which won a majority of seats for the first time since 2015.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Quick Facts
Born:
March 25, 1972, Haifa, Israel (age 53)

News

Israel Launches ‘Preemptive Strikes’ Against Iran, Defense Minister Says June 13, 2025, 7:30 AM ET (CNN)
Israel election poll: Netanyahu falls short; Bennett leads as PM choice June 6, 2025, 7:13 AM ET (Jerusalem Post)
Golan surges in polls, Bennett leads opposition; Likud weakens May 30, 2025, 8:48 AM ET (Jerusalem Post)

Naftali Bennett (born March 25, 1972, Haifa, Israel) is an Israeli high-tech entrepreneur and politician who served as Israel’s prime minister (2021–22). Although he is occasionally described as far-right because of his religious political orientation, his devoted activism in favor of Israeli settlements and his controversial 2012 proposal that would restrict West Bank Palestinians to enclaves, he forged a historic unity government in 2021 consisting of left- and right-wing parties as well as a party that represents some Palestinian citizens of Israel. His fragile coalition collapsed a year later when right-wing members withdrew to bring about a right-wing government instead. He then left politics, but during the Israel-Hamas War he again emerged as a major contender for the prime ministership.

While performing draft duty in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the 1990s, Bennett served in Sayeret Matkal and Maglan, elite commando units that operate behind enemy lines. He then pursued a degree in law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The son of American immigrants to Israel, Bennett left Israel for New York and cofounded an anti-fraud software company in 1999. In 2005 he sold the company for $145 million and returned to Israel.

Political rise

Bennett’s political career began in 2006 when he was hired as the chief of staff of Benjamin Netanyahu, then leader of the opposition in the Knesset (parliament). In 2009, the same year Netanyahu was elected prime minister, Bennett took a break from the political sphere to lead an Israel-based company. But after the United States pressured Israel to freeze construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in late 2009, Bennett was appointed in 2010 as director general of the Yesha Council, an organization representing those settlements and their populations. He led a pressure campaign against the freeze, which ended in September 2010, and continued in this role until 2012.

In late 2012, as Israel prepared for polls set for early 2013, Bennett was elected to lead the religious right-wing Jewish Home party. His relatively young age and fresh ideas helped steer the minor party to a historic victory: winning 12 seats, it became the fourth largest party in the Knesset, just behind the Labour Party, with 15 seats. His campaign had touted his so-called Stability Initiative, a proposed solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that centered on Israeli annexation of Area C (areas of the West Bank under interim Israeli civil and security control; see Oslo Accords). The controversial plan, which drew attention to Bennett but never gained steam, rejected a two-state solution outright and would restrict most Palestinians in the West Bank to urban enclaves. Upon joining the Knesset, Bennett entered Netanyahu’s coalition and received several cabinet portfolios over the years that followed.

As Israel prepared for elections set for April 2019, Bennett formed the New Right party, a right-wing party intended to appeal to both secular and religious Jews. The new party failed to win seats in the Knesset, but the inability of the new Knesset to form a government led to its dissolution only months later. He reentered the Knesset later that year after forming Yamina (“Toward the Right”), an electoral list that included small religious right-wing parties, including Jewish Home.

Prime ministership

In March 2021 the fourth general election in two years left Bennett in the position of kingmaker. After Yair Lapid, leader of the centrist party Yesh Atid, received the mandate to form a government in May, Bennett joined a coalition with him that included a broad spectrum of left- and right-wing parties seeking to unseat Netanyahu, who had been indicted on criminal corruption charges. The coalition agreement, reached in June with a bare majority in the Knesset, allowed Bennett to become Israel’s prime minister in a two-year rotation with Lapid.

As prime minister, Bennett faced the challenge of maneuvering amid the delicate and heterogeneous coalition. Among his first tests was the erection of a new settlement outpost in the West Bank: the coalition was starkly divided over whether the state should authorize or dismantle it. Bennett reached an agreement with the settlers to vacate the outpost voluntarily and return at a later date under state sanction, thus avoiding a decision that would immediately cause the coalition to collapse. He later pushed through legislation that would invest more than $9 billion in Arab communities, appeasing a key demand of a party in the coalition that represented the interests of Palestinian citizens of Israel. In November 2021 the government passed its first budget since 2018, a crucial hurdle that indicated the coalition’s ability to cooperate. Still, sudden political tensions, such as those that followed a fatal shooting in Jerusalem by a member of Hamas that same month, underscored the potential of unexpected crises to derail the coalition.

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It was ultimately from Bennett’s own party that the coalition faced defection in April 2022. The coalition’s chairwoman, Idit Silman, joined the opposition after the left-wing health minister upheld a court ruling that permitted the entrance of leavened foodstuffs (chametz) into hospitals during Passover, a Jewish holiday in which leaven is prohibited. Her statement cited frustration with the unity government and her desire for a right-wing government that would preserve a “Jewish identity” in public institutions.

Now deprived of a majority in the Knesset, Bennett’s government found it difficult to pass legislation when the parliamentary body reconvened in May from its Passover recess. In June it was unable to muster enough votes to renew an emergency regulation, in place since the Six-Day War (1967), which provided for Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be governed under civil rather than military administration. With chaos in the legal system imminent if the regulation were allowed to lapse, Bennett moved to dissolve the Knesset and call early elections, yielding the prime minister’s office to Lapid per the conditions of the coalition agreement. The dissolution, which rendered the Knesset unable to respond to emergency situations, allowed the automatic extension of emergency regulations until elections could lead to the formation of a new government. Bennett, meanwhile, announced that he would not run in the next set of elections.

Return to politics

After more than a year of absence from Israel’s political scene, Bennett publicly proposed strategies to confront Hamas and Iran, a major source of support for Hamas, after the brutal Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. In opinion pieces, he emphasized the importance of targeting Iran, writing in The Economist that Hamas is “just one tentacle spreading from a Tehran-based octopus of terrorism.” In 2024, after he expressed interest in retaking the helm as prime minister, polls in August and September showed him as a front-runner for the position.

Adam Zeidan