Gantz: Party of Jabotinsky, Begin elected a leader with 3 criminal indictments

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s crushing defeat of challenger Gideon Sa’ar in a Likud leadership race drew predictably divided responses from Israeli politicians on the right and left Friday, as parties turned from the previous day’s vote to look toward March’s general election.

Benny Gantz, head of Likud’s main rival party Blue and White, lamented the fact that “the party of [Zeev] Jabotinsky and [Menachem] Begin, who spoke of the supremacy of the law, has elected a leader with three criminal indictments who seeks to bring down the rule of law and obtain personal immunity instead of dealing with what is important to Israelis.”

Gantz said Blue and White would now seek to present the country with “a mirror image to ‘the Netanyahu party’, advancing unity, statesmanship and internal reconciliation” as an alternative in the next election, the nation’s third in less than a year.

Within Likud the party’s No. 2, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein, the only senior lawmaker in the party to not have backed either candidate, praised Netanyahu and urged the party to move beyond any rifts caused by the charged primary. “After today we are one big, united Likud,” Edelstein tweeted.

Netanyahu won some 72.5 percent of the vote in the Likud primary, with Sa’ar, his only challenger, taking the other 27.5%. Some 57,000 Likud voters, or 49.4% of party members, took part in the primary.

On the left, politicians expressed disappointment with the results, chiding Likud for sticking by a leader facing corruption charges and predicting the result would lead to continued political deadlock. Netanyahu failed to form a government following elections in April and September, leading to the unprecedented upcoming third poll.

Public surveys have predicted the new election will bring similar results to the previous too, and may even see Likud do worse.

“The results show Likud is disconnected from the nation,” said Labor Party head Amir Peretz. “The popular and dignified movement that was once led by Menachem Begin has chosen a man charged in three serious cases as its leader. Likud as a popular and dignified movement has ended definitively today.”

Nitzan Horovitz, leader of the left-wing Meretz party, wrote on Twitter that the victory had sunk any chances of a unity government, “because he won’t let anybody else have Balfour,” he wrote, referring to the Prime Minister’s Residence. “The only option for Blue and White [to form a coalition]: center-left-Arabs.”

Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman, a potential kingmaker who has demanded that Likud and Blue and White form a unity government, said the results “haven’t changed a thing.”

In a Facebook post, Liberman contended that both Likud and Blue and White were in the pocket of the ultra-Orthodox.

“Today it’s clearer than ever that Netanyahu and Gantz are not interested in a liberal unity government, but rather a narrow government with the ultra-Orthodox, who will just go with whoever gives them the most money.”

On the right, party leaders who have allied with Netanyahu hailed him for the victory, expressing hopes that he would manage to break the political impasse on his third try.

“We all hope that this is the first victory ahead of a big win for the right-wing camp, a victory that will begin the creation of a strong, stable right-wing government,” tweeted New Right No. 2 Ayelet Shaked.

Shas leader Aryeh Deri, who had campaigned for Netanyahu ahead of the vote, said: “As a partner, I am happy for the great vote of confidence you received from a large public.”

He promised to maintain the bloc of right-wing and religious parties set up after the September election and, “God willing, we’ll form a strong right-wing government [after the next election] that will upkeep the nation’s Jewish character.”

Netanyahu allied himself with the ultra-Orthodox Shas and United Torah Judaism parties as well as right-wing Yamina after the year’s second vote in September, forming a large negotiation bloc that critics say helped stymie unity talks with Blue and White.

Liberman, a hard-line right-wing secularist, has refused to sit in a coalition with either the ultra-Orthodox or Arab parties. However, he has shied from coming out forcefully against immunity for Netanyahu in his criminal cases, leading to hopes by some in Likud that he could be convinced to join their bloc.

Thursday’s leadership contest was the first significant challenge to Netanyahu’s leadership of the Likud in more than a decade, but he maintained the support of the vast majority of the party’s Knesset members and its prominent local leaders and activists, and can thus utilize the result as a boost ahead of Israel’s third general elections in under a year.

He hailed the win as a “huge victory,” as results came in early Friday.

Sa’ar later conceded defeat, and pledged support for Netanyahu and Likud ahead of the March 2 vote. “The contest was vital to the Likud and its democratic character,” he said.

Sa’ar had argued that Netanyahu, having failed twice to form a government after the April and September elections, would lead the right-wing bloc to a third failure, and that he, by contrast, would ensure the right retained power.

A series of polls in recent weeks have indicated a Sa’ar-led Likud would win fewer seats in a third election than under Netanyahu, but the overall right-wing bloc might be larger — potentially enabling it to break the impasse and form a majority government.