‘A statesmanlike right’: Why Gideon Sa’ar has decamped Gantz’s National Unity party
Disagreements over the conduct of the war and desire to position himself as a liberal-right alternative to PM once the war is over drove New Hope party leader’s decision to exit
Sam Sokol is the Times of Israel's political correspondent. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"
On Tuesday evening, MK Gideon Sa’ar, the leader of the right-wing New Hope party, unexpectedly announced he was breaking off from the National Unity faction, dissolving his alliance with Minister Benny Gantz.
Explaining that his erstwhile allies did “not convey the voice, positions and emphasis” that he would have brought to the war cabinet, Sa’ar, a former senior Likud lawmaker, called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to appoint him to the body — while positioning himself as an alternative leader of the “statesmanlike right.”
Responding to Sa’ar during a press conference in the Knesset on Wednesday, Gantz said he was surprised by his former ally’s decision, and stressed that he was against any change in the war cabinet’s makeup.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff and one of three voting members of the war cabinet, told reporters.
“I hope the entire country’s leadership understands this. More than ever, this is the time to act with responsibility and in a statesmanlike manner, and do what is right for Israel,” Gantz said. “Excuse me, but this is not the time to engage in politics. The issue is not me or my party, but the State of Israel.”
This prompted an angry reply from Sa’ar, accusing Gantz not only of opposing his presence in the narrow decision-making body, but also that of hawkish opposition politician Avigdor Liberman.
“His opposition to changing the limited composition of the cabinet was based on a wrong diagnosis: ‘What works should not be fixed.’ A large part of the population feels and knows that there is much to be corrected in the way the war is being navigated by the limited cabinet,” Sa’ar wrote of Gantz in a post on X.
“Lowering military pressure and slowing down the destruction of Hamas forces is not correct. At this point, we should have [already completed] the operation in Rafah,” Sa’ar charged. “This is not about politics, but about the way to decide the war.”
But aside from his concerns over how the government is managing the ongoing conflict in Gaza, politics also seem to be a significant concern for former Likud bigwig Sa’ar, who was pushed out of the party after challenging Netanyahu for its leadership several years ago.
His New Hope party, which has four seats, merged with Gantz’s Blue and White, which has eight, in July 2022.
After the elections later that year, the National Unity alliance was part of the opposition, but joined Netanyahu’s coalition as an emergency measure, following the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught that sparked the war in Gaza.
Under the deal, five members of the National Unity party were added to the broader security cabinet that operates under every government: Gantz, Gadi Eisenkot, Sa’ar, Chili Tropper, and Yifat Shasha-Biton.
Sa’ar was left out in the cold when Gantz was appointed to the war cabinet, while fellow former IDF chief of staff Eisenkot was made an observer.
Before that, the party had refused to sit with Netanyahu, who is on trial in three corruption cases and was accused of trying to undermine Israel’s democracy with his far-right government’s judicial overhaul that has since been suspended.
New Hope MK Sharren Haskel said Wednesday that the party’s opposition to Netanyahu has not changed and that the breakaway from National Unity was due to “difficulties and the gaps between us and [Gantz’s] Blue and White [party] on security issues.”
Speaking with the Knesset Channel, Haskel said New Hope was seeking “influence on military matters,” in order to bring about victory in Gaza.
After the war, there needs to be “a unity government that is as wide as possible because our country, our nation, needs to go through a long process of rehabilitation — security rehabilitation, economic rehabilitation, and social rehabilitation,” she continued.
In his own interview with the Knesset Channel last month, Sa’ar indicated that he no longer believed that Netanyahu should be boycotted. However, Sa’ar also suggested he had not changed his personal opinion of Netanyahu and said that after a new election is held, politicians must respect the will of the public.
Asked if she and her fellow New Hope lawmakers were leaving National Unity to position Sa’ar as a good alternative to Netanyahu and whether they intended to rejoin Likud, Haskel responded that “we’re not going anywhere. Our position regarding Netanyahu is as it was — both today and in the future.”
Writing in the Hebrew news site Walla, journalist Ben Caspit linked Sa’ar’s decision with concern that former prime minister Naftali Bennett and former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen could establish rival right-wing parties and his desire to preempt other rivals with regard to Netanyahu.
When asked if New Hope was looking to garner support from other right-wing figures such as Bennett, Haskel told the Knesset Channel that “we very much hope that not a few right-wing, statesmanlike, liberal forces will return to us.”
New Hope MK Ze’ev Elkin, another former Likud lawmaker, also framed the split both in terms of the conduct of the war and positioning the party for the day after.
Speaking with Israel Hayom, he denied coordinating New Hope’s exit with the prime minister, stating that “if he wants us in the coalition, our voice should be heard in the cabinet.”
“We did not support Netanyahu before this move, and we will not support him after,” he continued, arguing that “Netanyahu and the leadership need to be replaced. We are talking about an alternative. There is a public with right-wing positions that does not support Netanyahu, and we tell them — here you have a home.”
In a further interview with 103 FM, Elkin said that National Unity was “never one party,” but an alliance of centrist and right-wing factions that grew increasingly fractious and prevented New Hope from expressing its positions.
At the end of the day, there are many Israelis on the right who do not identify with either Netanyahu or ultranationalist National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, and are instead looking for a “liberal right” party, he continued.
“We say to this public, you do not have to go back to Netanyahu — there is an address in the Knesset that has not existed until now, a liberal national right, a statesmanlike right.”
