Lapid-Yesh Atid Will Not Join Emergency Gov't

Wires reporting that main opposition Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid will not be taking his party into the emergency gov't created on the evening of 11 October. The liberal Yesh Atid was invited to join the emergency unity gov't alongside former defence minister Benny Gantz' catch-all National Unity alliance. However, Lapid stated that his party would not join a gov't that included the far-right Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit.

• Lapid: "We will not vote today in the plenum against the government. The last thing I care about right now is politics and votes. These are war days, and we don't want to vote against anything. [...]The citizens of Israel are allowed to demand that for once, for our children who are now going into battle, they simply do the right thing here. We all know what the right thing is: a government without extremists, one limited and efficient cabinet, everything moved aside in favor of managing the campaign."
• Yesh Atid not joining the gov't is unlikely to have any significant impact on decision-making. With the conflict ongoing domestic political antipathies have evaporated in the face of the Hamas attacks.
• The emergency gov't will have a three-man 'war cabinet' consisting of PM Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Yoav Galant, and Gantz, with the intention that this streamlined group will make swift decisions before going to the wider security Cabinet.