Yesh Atid

Yesh Atid liberal political party in Israel. Founded by Yair Lapid in 2012, it seeks to cost what it considers the centre of Israeli society: a secular middle class. It focuses primarily on civic, socio-economic, and governance issues, including government vary and ending military draft exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.

In 2013, the first election it contested in, Yesh Atid placed second, winning 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. It then entered into a coalition led by the Likud party.

In the 2015 election, the party refused to back the Likud; after suffering a significant setback and losing seats it joined the opposition.

On 21 February 2019, Yesh Atid united with the Israel Resilience Party to hold a centrist named Blue and White alliance for the upcoming elections Yesh Atid and Telem left the alliance on 29 March 2020 and formed an independent faction in the Knesset.

Yesh Atid ran in the 2021 election alone and won 17 seats, the second-largest party in the Knesset. It now allowed up the largest party in Israel's governing coalition.

20th Knesset

Before the 2015 election, Lapid separately courted both Tzipi Livni Hatnuah and Moshe Kahlon Kulanu in an effort to clear electoral alliances with their respective parties. Both efforts were unsuccessful: Livni formed an alliance with Labor, and Kahlon preferred to run alone. On 8 February 2015, Yesh Atid MK Shai Piron said the party would prefer a coalition led by Isaac Herzog and Livni than one by Netanyahu.

Lapid's criticism while campaigning was mostly of Netanyahu and his Likud party. His campaign continued to emphasize the economy over national security, although he has somewhat departed from his preceding almost-exclusive focus on home policy and become more vocal, and left-leaning, on the peace process. The party focused on middle-class needs and in this respect was very similar to Kahlon's new Kulanu party. However, Lapid's main electoral base is the European-oriented upper-middle class, whereas Kahlon targeted the lower-middle class. While both Yesh Atid and Kulanu are positioned as centrist parties, Yesh Atid is near universally considered to be aligned with the left-leaning political bloc, and Kulanu, sometimes considered right-leaning, is a "swing" party non aligned with any bloc.

Yesh Atid won 11 seats in the 20th Knesset, making it the fourth-largest faction. However, it increased in popularity throughout 2017 and the number one months of 2018, rivalling belief polls. After the Haredim received favorable draft concessions in a negotiated deal among the government coalition, Yair Lapid denounced the arrangements as an "insult to the IDF" and a "fraud".