Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should vacate his post and make way for a temporary replacement from his ruling Likud party, but no elections should be called, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid argued on Monday.

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Speaking at the Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem, Lapid said that the prime minister has "mostly been preoccupied with talking to his lawyers, running and writing posts on Facebook and briefing journalists like yourself about his side of the story. So What I’ve been saying is he needs to step aside until this is resolved.”

Yair Lapid at the Presidential Conference in Jerusalem (צילום: אלי מנדלבאום)

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Elections, however, should be held off, he insisted. “You know what, we don’t even have to go to elections. They can put somebody, a temporary prime minister from Likud, as they have done before, until this is resolved,” he argued.

Describing the position of Israeli prime minister as being the second hardest in the world after the president of the United States, Lapid said that Netanyahu, politically beleaguered and engulfed in corruption investigations, could not be “100% in it” and that his continued occupation of the top spot was therefore untenable.

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

Lapid also spoke about his own relationship with Arnon Milchan, the Israeli billionaire who is at the center of the Case 1000 bribery scandal and who police are considering indicting.

“I’ve known Arnon Milchan for 25 years. I worked for him for a few months 22 years ago. Of course I reported it,” he said.

“I’ve met him many time but the thing is, the prime minister has been accused—and this wasn’t even been denied—of getting close to one million shekels from Arnon Milchan in gifts and other ways,” he added, before telling his interviewer he felt uncomfortable even discussing the matter.

Avi Gabbay (Photo: Alex Kolomoisky)

“I don’t even understand this kind of friendship. I mean, what kind of friendship is it when you get a million shekels from somebody?”

Leader of the Zionist Union camp also laid into Netanyahu during the conference. “A fair economy is an economy of clean corruption. Friends, I ‘m sorry to say, we have a government that has a culture of corruption,” Gabbay said in his remarks.

“It starts at the top and it continues down to ministers and mayors. An entire government culture of corruption. This is why I’ve called on PM Netanyahu to step down immediately. He did some good things for our country but nine years later it is time for change.”