The Finance Ministry does not have to be Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid’s political burial ground. As opposed to his predecessor Yuval Steinitz, Lapid assumes his post with significant independent political power.

The 19 mandates Lapid received in the elections allow the “rising star of the middle class" to assume his post from a position of strength and conduct himself confidently with the Treasury officials and the prime minister — who in effect was the one who ran the Finance Ministry over the past four years. 

Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz is viewed as one of Israel’s weakest finance ministers, if not the weakest of them all. Traditionally, the Finance Ministry was considered one of the three most important portfolios of the state, assumed in the past by such strong figures as Avraham Shochat, Yitzhak Moda’i, Yigal Horowitz, Pinhas Sapir and even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself. It was under Steinitz that the position became emptied of content and influence.

There is not enough space to list the number of occasions in which Netanyahu embarrassed his finance minister by overturning decisions Steinitz made, due to political whims or public pressure, without bothering to update him. Sometimes Netanyahu did this while Steinitz sat in a television studio, explaining why the decision he made was the right one. That is what happened when the rise in the price of fuel and the VAT on fruits and vegetables were cancelled. For his part, Steinitz wasn’t even insulted. He understood that he held his high position only because of Netanyahu’s political power, and that was the price he had to pay for his job.