United Right chairman MK Gideon Sa’ar was visibly exhausted when he walked into his office on Wednesday for an interview with The Jerusalem Post. The exhaustion was understandable given the political roller-coaster that the former minister experienced during the past two weeks.
Sa’ar entered the eye of the political storm on March 12, when he announced that his party would break away from Benny Gantz’s National Unity Party, and demanded to be added to the war cabinet. Sa’ar threatened that if his demand was not met quickly, his party would leave the government altogether.
According to Sa’ar, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested that he wait until after Purim. When the prime minister failed to come up with a way to bring Sa’ar into the war cabinet, Sa’ar announced on Monday that he was indeed leaving the government, and his resignation came into effect on Wednesday evening.
Sa’ar and Gantz joined forces ahead of the November 2022 election, with Gantz as No. 1 and Sa’ar as No. 2. The joint party won 12 seats in the election, four of which belonged to Sa’ar’s faction: Sa’ar, Yifat Shasha-Biton, Ze’ev Elkin, and Sharren Haskel.
Reports about a growing gap between Sa’ar and Gantz emerged prior to the October 7 Hamas massacre, and Sa’ar confirmed that he had been ready to leave the party earlier, but felt that doing so during wartime would be counterproductive.
Sa'ar tells of "lack of critical voices in the war cabinet"
“Unfortunately, the experiment failed,” Sa’ar said. One of the reasons he cited was Gantz’s failure to follow through on a commitment to merge the two parties into one central party run democratically.
But while it was “incorrect” to break up the union during the first months of the war, the war itself highlighted differences of opinion on security and diplomacy, such that the move became “necessary,” Sa’ar said.
Leaving the government, however, was a different matter, he said.
“Leaving the government was an outcome of the argument over whether the war was going in the right direction,” Sa’ar said. “I had criticism during the last few months, but I would have been willing to continue bearing the responsibility if I had a chance to attempt to influence, but influence today is in the war cabinet,” he said. He repeated a catchphrase that he said a number of times in recent weeks – the statutory national security cabinet had become a “parliament,” while in the war cabinet there was “a more serious exposure to information” that could have enabled him to influence strategic decisions.
“You cannot bear responsibility if you do not at least have the tools to try to lead to a change of direction,” Sa’ar said.
Sa’ar was especially critical of what he called a “lack of critical voices in the war cabinet.”
“It does not make sense that three out of the five members [of the war cabinet] are retired generals,” Sa’ar said, referring to Gallant, Gantz, and Eisenkot. Generals are experts in the use of force, but do not have an advantage when it comes to setting policy and strategy, he said. The war against Hamas is far more than just military – it includes diplomacy, social issues, media, and more; and the war cabinet’s current makeup is a negative factor in its “homogeneous” thinking, he argued.
Sa'ar will not publicly call for elections
Sa’ar, 57, has been involved in national politics for nearly 25 years. He served as government secretary under Netanyahu in 1999 and under former prime minister Ariel Sharon between 2001 and 2002. He then served as a member of Knesset in the Likud between 2003 and 2014, during which he served as education minister and interior minister, among other roles.
He rejoined the Likud ahead of the April 2019 election and ran in three elections within one year, before leaving in 2020 to form his own party, New Hope. The party won six seats, and Sa’ar served as justice minister in the Bennett-Lapid government. He joined with Gantz ahead of the most recent election, in November 2022.
NOW THAT he has left the government, Sa’ar said he intends to publicly challenge its policies. He will also return to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Subcommittee for Intelligence and Secret Services, which has remained leak-free since the beginning of the war and thus is a trusted place for security officials to speak openly. He also said he intends to try to influence government policy “informally,” but most importantly he can now “express, freely and openly in public discourse,” his criticism and policies.
Unlike other opposition parties, however, what he will not do is publicly call for an election, Sa’ar said. The best-case scenario would be if the coalition arrived at an agreed-upon date for an election at the start of 2025 so that it would not be held in the thick of war, Sa’ar said. But in the meantime, the coalition still enjoys a majority of 72 members of Knesset, and as long as National Unity remains in the government, talk of an election is unrealistic.
Talk of replacing Netanyahu with another member of the Likud without going to an election is also unrealistic, as it has been discussed for six years already and hasn’t happened.
When Sa’ar decided to merge with Gantz in 2022, his party was consistently polling under the electoral threshold. But the Likud then was receiving over 30 seats. With the Likud now not reaching 20 seats in most polls and Gantz’s numbers soaring, many expected initial polling to show most of the right-wing voters who moved from Netanyahu to Gantz to shift to Sa’ar. However, polling has Sa’ar’s United Right receiving just four to six seats, with some polls even showing Sa’ar falling below the electoral threshold.
"Hard work ahead" politically, Sa'ar says
But Sa’ar is not worried. He knew that the approximately 20 months with Gantz as No. 1 would harm the party, and was actually pleased with the poll results. The results translate into approximately 150,000-200,000 voters, and this is a “good starting point” for an existing party leaving a merger, Sa’ar argued. He added that poll results should be taken skeptically – an election campaign has yet to begin, and the numbers are likely to fluctuate as time goes on.
But Sa’ar acknowledged that there is “hard work” ahead. It would have been “far more comfortable” to remain within the framework of National Unity, but that was “not the right thing to do,” as it “was not the path with which we could have influenced the direction and dilemmas that Israel will face in the coming years,” Sa’ar said. Alternatively, it would have been easy for him to sign a coalition agreement with the Likud and ensure that the current government survives until the next election in 2026. But neither of these options were correct, he said.
The party that Sa’ar first formed upon breaking away from the Likud in December 2020 was “more necessary than ever” for voters who “hold forceful opinions about the way in which to defend our national interests,” but with a “correct understanding of democratic tradition and correct government culture,” Sa’ar said. “This was essentially the Likud in the days of [former prime ministers] Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, may their memories be a blessing,” he added.
Sa’ar said that he is in contact with other public figures with similar ideas, including former politicians, but not only. He hopes that they will “gather around” the foundations of his United Right Party – an existing party, with “large representation” in local government, state funding, and political capabilities. The potential for a large party is there, and Sa’ar said that he has begun to work toward this goal.
Figures on the Right that have reportedly been considering entry or reentry into politics include former prime minister Naftali Bennett, former interior minister and justice minister Ayelet Shaked, former communications minister Yoaz Hendel, and former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen. It is yet to be seen which of these figures decide to take part in a future election, and perhaps more importantly – whether any of them will be willing to join Sa’ar as opposed to serving at the head of their own parties. Hendel, for example, has already begun to organize groups of IDF reservists, but their political manifestation is so far unclear.
Haredi draft crisis could destabilize the government, Sa'ar says
REGARDING THE date of an election, Sa’ar said that he does not claim to be a prophet, but the current government crisis over the need to draft haredi (ultra-Orthodox) men into the IDF, which the haredi parties oppose, is serious, and could destabilize the government.
There are many thousands of haredim who, via fictitious enrollment, are avoiding IDF service despite not actually studying in yeshiva, Sa’ar said, and drafting these men alone would bring about an “enormous change” in the army. However, the haredi representatives and the “organized haredi public” today “are not in a place to bring about real change,” while the Israeli mainstream is no longer willing to accept the haredi exemption.
The reason for the haredi unwillingness to compromise stems from fear that these soldiers will not be able to maintain their haredi identities.
“You will not see haredi members of Knesset at events honoring haredi soldiers,” Sa’ar pointed out. “That is the big problem... the social ethos of the haredi public regarding IDF service,” he said.
According to Sa’ar, there is therefore a real chance that Israel’s mainstream is heading to a clash with the haredi public.
Sa’ar conceded that it is unrealistic to immediately recruit thousands of haredi men into the IDF, but insisted that Israelis are at a point where they expect to see the beginning of “true change,” and the haredi attitude is a “large problem.”
Israelis expect change not just because of the war and the government’s plan to extend IDF mandatory and reserve service for those who serve, but also due to the “energy” generated by nine months of protests against the government’s judicial reforms, Sa’ar said. This has led to Israelis becoming unwilling to accept political maneuvers that it would have accepted in the past.
“Unfortunately, I don’t see how this comes together, and this is a very big problem,” Sa’ar said.