If Senator Schumer were to get his way, and Israeli elections were held next week, it’s certainly not clear who would win. It’s not even clear what the alignment of the nation’s political parties would be. Still, an important political development took place last week, in the form of an announcement from the veteran Knesset member Gideon Sa’ar. Lahav Harkov explains what happened and what it means:
As new polling reveals that Israel’s voters are increasingly seeking a more pragmatic center-right choice for prime minister, politicians on the right are jockeying for position. In the boldest move yet, the security-cabinet minister Gideon Sa’ar has broken off from the war-cabinet minister Benny Gantz’s National Union faction and is making a bid to join the three-man war cabinet. The maneuvering suggests an ongoing debate over what it means to be “right wing” in Israel as the war in Gaza grinds on and domestic issues such as haredi conscription in the IDF reemerge.
Sa’ar’s call to join Gantz, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in the war cabinet, which Sa’ar argued is insufficiently hawkish, immediately brought the same demand from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party.
Sa’ar, who has served in several cabinet posts, was once one of the most popular figures in Likud, viewed as Netanyahu’s likely successor. He left the Likud in 2020 to establish his own party, after losing a Likud leadership primary against Netanyahu. In light of lackluster polling, he merged his list with Gantz’s ahead of the 2022 election.
Research by Menachem Lazar, a veteran Israeli pollster, shows there is a sizable group of voters looking for a center-right choice—though not necessarily led by Sa’ar. Some Israelis sought a pragmatic conservative party between Likud and National Union on the political spectrum even before the war started.
Read more on Jewish Insider: https://jewishinsider.com/2024/03/gideon-saar-benny-gantz-israeli-right-national-union-split/