Yair Lapid. Photo: Wikipedia

Times of Israel – The Likud party offered Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid the position of finance minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s next government, but Lapid, who has his sights set on the Foreign Ministry, turned down the offer, Likud sources said on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the right-wing Jewish Home party denied a report in Maariv that its leader, Naftali Bennett, had been offered, and accepted, the Finance portfolio.

With Netanyahu apparently resigned to the fact that his next coalition will not include, at least at first, the ultra-Orthodox parties, talks have shifted to a discussion of which Cabinet positions will be divvied up among the various parties and which will remain in the hands of Likud and its partner party, Yisrael Beytenu.

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