Should he become the next prime minister, Yair Lapid promises he would grant full recognition to the Jewish Reform and Conservative movements “my first week in government.”

Speaking to a gathering of Jewish journalists convening in Jerusalem on Monday, Yesh Atid party leader Lapid declared as “unacceptable” the government’s treatment of non-Orthodox Jews. In particular, he denounced its failure to deliver on a promise to build a special prayer section at the Western Wall where men and women could hold mixed prayer services.

Open gallery view Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, November 21, 2016. Credit: Olivier Fitoussi

“It is becoming that Israel is now the only country in the world in which there is no freedom of religion for Jews,” he said. The government had approved the egalitarian prayer plaza in January, but under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refrained from implementing the decision.

According to a poll published over the weekend, were elections held today, Lapid’s opposition party would win as many seats as Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud, giving him a reasonable shot at replacing the prime minister.

Lapid noted that when the government had campaigned against the Iranian nuclear deal in the U.S. Congress, it had enlisted the help of several Jewish congressmen who belong to the Reform movement. “And then the Israeli government tells them that their synagogues are not synagogues and that Reform Jews aren’t Jews.”

Also addressing the gathering, Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett – the leader of the Orthodox, hard-right Habayit Hayehudi party – said he had paid a “significant political price” for supporting the Western Wall agreement, and even before that, for building a makeshift egalitarian prayer space at the site as a temporary measure.

“In my political base, it’s not very popular to be the guy who set up that plaza,” he said. “I’m never happy to pay a political price, but I do it without second thoughts because it’s the right thing.”