Why Gideon Sa'ar should worry Netanyahu much more than Miri Regev

Asked if he agreed with Netanyahu’s charges that the legal establishment were trying to overthrow him, Sa’ar reiterated what he has been saying for months.

By GIL HOFFMAN
Likud MK Gideon Sa’ar (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Likud MK Gideon Sa’ar
(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
Before the coronavirus resurfaced this weekend, the nightly primetime newscasts had a rare night with no obvious lead headline.
When such circumstances arise, the fallback plan tends to be to rely on political fights, which can always be exaggerated when necessary.
So the newscasts led with Transportation Minister Miri Regev’s interview with Yediot Aharonot, in which she answered affirmatively to a question about whether Blue and White leader Benny Gantz is “still half-baked” and “not ready yet” to be prime minister.
Gantz leaked that he left a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to protest Regev’s statement. The Likud released a statement afterward, saying the election campaign is over and both sides needed to stop attacking each other. It later leaked that Netanyahu scolded Regev for “harming unity.” He did not scold MK Nir Barkat for saying the same thing two days later.
The leaks served both sides, making Gantz look like he stood up for himself during a week when he was portrayed as a dishrag for not criticizing Netanyahu’s courtside rant against the legal establishment and Netanyahu look like the proverbial king getting his subjects in order.
It would have been far less convenient for Netanyahu had the primetime newscasts led with The Jerusalem Post’s interview with Likud MK Gideon Sa’ar, who ran against him for Likud leader in December. In the interview, Sa’ar undermined Netanyahu’s entire thesis that the legal establishment was out to get him, which the prime minister took pains to hammer home and even got half the Likud faction to endorse.
Asked if he agreed with Netanyahu’s charges that the legal establishment was trying to overthrow him, Sa’ar reiterated what he has been saying for months. He does not believe there is such a conspiracy to bring down the Right.
“I disagreed with calling it a coup when Netanyahu said it following his indictment in November,” he said. “That does not mean things were not done improperly in the probe, such as with drafting certain state witnesses. But was there an attempt by the attorney-general, who was chosen not by me but by the Netanyahu government, to topple the government? I didn’t see it that way then, and I don’t see it now.”
He also cautioned against elements in US President Donald Trump’s peace plan that are considered problematic by the Right and vowed to fight them. He noted that the plan calls for a Palestinian state on 70% of the land in Judea and Samaria, a land bridge from there to Gaza, giving up land in the Negev, and it would leave Jewish communities surrounded by Palestinian territory.
While Sa’ar said he does not believe Netanyahu or anyone else in Likud agreed with those parts of the plan, and he credited Netanyahu with the plan’s positive parts, he vowed to maintain his ideology in a way Netanyahu has not always done.
He said he did not believe Netanyahu will evacuate settlements or create a Palestinian state, despite Netanyahu’s announced support for a two-state solution. But he also talked tough.
“If Netanyahu advances a Palestinian state, I will work with full force to prevent a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, no matter who advances it, because that would be dangerous for Israel,” he said.
In the interview, Sa’ar clearly did not want to speak about Netanyahu so much. His campaign against him is long done, and he wants to move on and go back to speaking for himself again without what he says being seen in the context of an internal fight in Likud.
But he remains the only Likud figure courageous enough to have challenged the prime minister. Unlike other potential candidates, he is not waiting for the post-Netanyahu era to be independent and advance what he believes in.
For Netanyahu, that is the greatest political challenge. While Gantz and even senior Likud figures like Regev can be controlled, Saar made clear in the interview that he cannot.
There is an opposition leader in Yair Lapid, whose criticism will be tainted by the support he receives from the Center-Left, despite his efforts to distance himself from that camp. But if Sa’ar makes his voice heard as the Trump plan and Netanyahu’s trial advance, his criticism would be taken very seriously and could give the prime minister serious problems.


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