"We will do the impossible": Yair Lapid's promise to the next government

Opposition leader Yair Lapid spoke today (Wednesday) at the "Beyad" party convention and pledged that the next government will work to pass a constitution for the State of Israel, with the Declaration of Independence serving as its preamble. Lapid presented the move as a "national goal intended to establish democratic rules of the game, restrain the power of the government, and forge broad agreements even with those who will not support the government."

Lapid's full speech:

"If there is one thing missing today in the State of Israel, it is something we can all be proud of. There were such moments in the life of this state. Something happened, something was done, that each of us felt proud and felt that he was a part of it. I was a child during Operation Entebbe, but it was such a moment. Every child my age felt that it was also a little bit his. Each of us was a little bit Yoni Netanyahu landing on the runway and going to save the hostages. Our parents felt that way about the liberation of the Western Wall. There was the famous photo of the paratroopers by the Western Wall, and everyone looked at them and felt that it was also him. Everyone was Tal Brody saying, 'We are on the map and we are staying on the map.' When Ada Yonath passed away this week, I remembered how we all didn't really understand what ribosomes were, but the Nobel Prize she received was also ours. Of her first-grade teacher, and of our tax money that built her lab. Nations are built around such moments. Around moments when everyone becomes part of something bigger than himself. When President Kennedy spoke in Texas and said, 'We will go to the moon,' he had no clue how they would do it. The experts were against it, the technology didn't exist yet, but a whole nation looked at the sky and said to itself: 'I am on my way there. I will get to the moon.'

For a long time, this hasn't happened to us. For a long time, we haven't looked at the sky. We are a nation in crisis. Because of October 7th, but not only. Because of the Israeli war of tribes, but not only. Because nothing is managed, from Ben Gurion Airport to the Haredi draft, but not only. We are in crisis because we don't have a great, inspiring goal that we need to fight for together. When we started this election campaign, I vowed to myself that if the people of Israel put their trust in us, we would do everything to find such a goal. Not to settle for maintenance. To find a new, great Israeli idea that will connect us all.

Where do we start? The first step we are taking here today towards the future is to return to our original idea. There is one unfulfilled promise in the Declaration of Independence: to write a constitution. In recent years, we have learned the hard way that without a constitution, we might fall apart from within. The time has come to fulfill the promise. The next government will pass a constitution, and the Declaration of Independence will be its opening chapter. It is our duty, it is the historical destiny of the next government — to be the government that will prevent any possibility of a civil war. That will define the foundations of our democracy, that will ensure we always remain a democracy, that will set the rules of the game by which we will live for the next hundred years.

We need to make this change together. All the people of Israel. Not the coalition against the opposition, not half the nation forcing its way on the other half. Not a mirror image of what Yariv Levin did. We are not coming to take revenge on them for the judicial coup. Maybe they deserve it, but it leads nowhere. We are coming to fix. Amidst all the chaos and noise, people don't remember, but all our most important Basic Laws: the Basic Law: The Judiciary, the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, the Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation, all were enacted with the full cooperation of the coalition and the opposition. I know they will tell us that it is impossible today, that everything has changed, that there is no way to reach agreements with them, but I told you: we want to do the impossible. We wanted a great goal — this is a great goal. We established 'Beyad' to rediscover this place within us. Everyone talks about unity and union, we did it. We said, 'We don't agree on everything, but what connects us is bigger and more important. If we want to make a change, we must do it with people who think differently than us.' We need to win the election, and then we will pass a constitution that even those who didn't vote for us can sign. An inspiring constitution that will cause us to deviate from the political moment, from the political profit, from the political chaos, in favor of something bigger than all of us. A constitution is the moment when precisely the one who won the election agrees to impose restrictions on himself and ensure that his power is restrained. A constitution is the promise to those who lost the election: the state is also yours.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught us that there is a difference between a contract and a covenant. A contract is a transaction, a covenant is a relationship. A contract deals with interests, a covenant defines identity. A constitution is both a contract and a covenant. It is a contract because it sets the rules of the game. It is a covenant because it says who we are, what connects us, what we will never give up. The constitution will not be a technical document. Not just the Basic Law: Legislation and the Basic Law: The Judiciary. It will be the moment when the nation reinvents itself. The first step will be: the Knesset will convene and vote on the Declaration of Independence as the preamble of the Israeli constitution. The first chapter of the constitution will be the value-based foundation of the state. The State of Israel 'will be based on the foundations of liberty, justice and peace in the light of the vision of the prophets of Israel; will maintain complete social and political equality of rights for all its citizens without distinction of religion, race or sex; will ensure freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture;' We are not returning to the Declaration of Independence to live in the past. We are returning to it to build the future it promised us. We are returning to it so that every child, twenty years from now, a hundred years from now, can say to himself, 'This is my state.' 'Even when I am in the minority, there are rules that protect me.' 'This is the covenant that I am also signed on.'"