As the political landscape grows more tangled following the final count of votes, Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid published a detailed post Friday morning delivering a combative and calculated message to the public, arguing that Benjamin Netanyahu has lost the ability to assemble a coalition.
"On Tuesday at 10 p.m. we all looked at the screen and waited for one number: 61. It didn't appear. Not for us, certainly not for him," Lapid opened. "I know. I also wanted a clear, immediate victory, the kind you go to sleep with. That's not what we got. But Netanyahu got 53 seats. A crash. Even from that small number, 13 seats belong to parties that announce they are not Zionist. He's left with 40. That's what he has. Whatever he does, he has nowhere to bring a government from. So we won. It's not a knockout victory, it's a victory on points. That also counts. A victory is a victory."
"It's done in small rooms — this is the hour of the watchmakers"
Lapid addressed the efforts to form a government against the backdrop of the complex mandate map, and turned to his supporters with a unique demand ahead of the political contacts taking place behind the scenes:
"Now comes the truly hard part: trying to form a government. We owe this to those who stood in line on Tuesday, to those who flew specially, to those who flew and stood outside the polling station for eight hours and convinced people. It will be difficult, I have no insurance certificate. It's not an exact science and not even mechanics, it's a complex political process. But we have one thing we didn't have on Monday morning: a huge Israeli majority that announced this is what it wants."
He added a request for restraint from the public: "So I need to ask you something that's hard to ask of Israelis: patience. An election campaign is the most extroverted thing there is, forming a government is the complete opposite. You do it in small rooms, slowly, without cameras. Whoever talks about it usually isn't really involved in the process. This is the hour of the watchmakers, not those banging the gong. A watchmaker doesn't make noise, he sits with a magnifying glass, moves one gear, then another. In the end the clock works. If you want to know whether something is happening behind the quiet you're hearing now, the answer is yes."
