Yair Lapid, who leads IsraelтАЩs parliamentary opposition, has said that he would join an Israeli government led by the right as long as it excluded the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and some of Mr. NetanyahuтАЩs hard-line partners.
тАЬIsrael has lost faith in the prime minister,тАЭ Mr. Lapid told the Israeli network Channel 12 in an interview on Wednesday, adding, тАЬWe cannot allow ourselves to conduct an extended war with a prime minister that the public does not trust.тАЭ
Mr. Netanyahu тАЬmust go now,тАЭ Mr. Lapid said.
IsraelтАЩs political opposition has been fiercely critical of Mr. NetanyahuтАЩs leadership and many have called for his removal in the past. But after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks that the Israeli government has said left more than 1,200 dead last month, most opposition parties rallied around the war effort.
One opposition faction тАФ the National Unity alliance, led by Benny Gantz тАФ joined the emergency wartime government under Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Lapid, whose Yesh Atid party controls 24 of 120 seats in the Israeli Parliament, or Knesset, rejected an offer to also join.
But public anger against Mr. Netanyahu has mounted since the Hamas attack, with some accusing him of failing to prevent the surprise assault and of overseeing a sluggish government response.
Mr. Netanyahu has refused to say whether he bears any responsibility for the disastrous failure to prevent the assault. Other senior officials, including IsraelтАЩs finance minister and several top security chiefs, have publicly said that they failed in their duty to protect the countryтАЩs citizens.
Mr. Netanyahu briefly appeared to blame IsraelтАЩs security establishment in a post on social media roughly three weeks after the Hamas attack, saying that officials had failed to warn him of the danger. He later apologized for that comment, but has maintained that questions of responsibility should wait until after the war.
Under Mr. LapidтАЩs proposal, Mr. NetanyahuтАЩs right-wing Likud party would lead a тАЬgovernment of national reconstructionтАЭ after choosing a new leader.
The proposal is almost certainly a nonstarter for Mr. Netanyahu, IsraelтАЩs longest-serving prime minister, who has weathered successive political crises, three criminal cases, and a year and a half out of office before he returned to power in late 2022. So far, no one in his Likud party has publicly discussed ousting him.
In a statement, Likud called Mr. LapidтАЩs remarks тАЬsaddening and shameful,тАЭ accusing him of playing politics during wartime and of attempting to replace Mr. Netanyahu with a government that would establish a Palestinian state.
