Exactly one month has passed since the chairman of the Yesh Atid Party, Minister of Finance Yair Lapid, took his involvement in the diplomatic process up a notch. Since then, the negotiations with the Palestinians have kept steady on his agenda. Lapid’s diplomatic frenzy began with a long post on his Facebook page on Dec. 8, in which he explained how critical a diplomatic agreement is for the Israeli economy. Later, he devoted entire speeches to his commitment to reaching an agreement with the Palestinians. On Jan. 6, he began his faction’s meeting by calling on the prime minister not to miss an opportunity to reach an arrangement, “which will enable us to separate from the Palestinians.”

Judging by the most recent polls, his increasing involvement with the diplomatic negotiations, which Lapid preferred to underplay at the start of his political career, has actually been good for him. A poll conducted by Israeli TV Channel 2 earlier this week gave his Yesh Atid Party 14 seats. This could indicate that the party’s long decline in the polls since the last election has finally been halted. While it is still five seats short of Lapid’s remarkable achievement in that election, it is good news for someone whose political eulogy had already been written.

Over the past few weeks Lapid has discovered that his constituents want to see him play a more dominant role in the diplomatic arena, and that they regard his alliance with Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett and the HaBayit HaYehudi Party as unnatural. The advantage of this, as far as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is concerned, is, of course, the chance that this political alliance, which was a real nuisance to him at the start of his term, will ultimately disintegrate. The disadvantage for the prime minister is that as of now there is a large force within his coalition that will pressure him to make progress in the negotiations with the Palestinians. The balance of forces within the coalition is becoming less comfortable for Netanyahu, who is trapped between a government that demands a significant diplomatic process and his own party, of which large swathes are trying to sabotage that process.

During an interview with Lapid, which took place last Monday in his Knesset office, he was more than happy to discuss the diplomatic issue. Later that day, he was scheduled to hold a phone call with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Despite the pessimistic mood that has accompanied these negotiations since they started, the minister of finance is convinced that this time there is a real chance of reaching some tangible achievement.