Likud to vote on readmitting Gideon Sa’ar five years after he bolted the party

By Sam Sokol 13 August 2025, 2:35 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. 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"

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar attend a plenum session on the state budget at the Knesset in Jerusalem, December 16, 2024. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

The Likud Central Committee is scheduled to vote this evening on a merger with the coalition’s New Hope party, bringing its chairman, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, back into Likud five years after he quit over differences with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

According to the Ynet outlet, Sa’ar’s return is opposed by Defense Minister Israel Katz, who reportedly views him as a potential rival within the party.

New Hope joined the coalition last September and in March, Sa’ar signed an agreement to dissolve the faction into Likud. Those decisions followed consistent polls showing his party would fail to clear the electoral threshold if it ran solo in the next election.

The Likud-New Hope agreement will require the scrapping of an August 2021 resolution barring members of New Hope from serving in Likud, the two parties said in a statement in March.

The statement added that once approved, New Hope’s roughly 2,400 members will be registered as Likud members and its lawmakers will be afforded similar status to other Likud MKs and ministers. According to a copy of the agreement cited by Hebrew media outlets, Likud will also cover roughly NIS 1.5 million ($409,000) of New Hope’s debt.

Sa’ar will also no longer be able to vote how he chooses on the coalition’s contentious legislation to overhaul the judicial system.

Israeli politician Gideon Sa’ar poses for a photo at the party headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)

The Likud-New Hope statement said New Hope’s dissolution would take effect for the next election, currently scheduled to take place in 2026. In that election, the statement said, Sa’ar will choose a candidate to get the highest-ranked reserved spot on Likud’s electoral slate, which is mostly determined through a primary.

Ynet reported that Sa’ar will likely select Minister Ze’ev Elkin — a onetime Likud power player and Netanyahu confidant who left the party with Sa’ar in 2020 to found New Hope, after Sa’ar unsuccessfully challenged Netanyahu for Likud’s leadership.

Upon leaving Likud that year, Sa’ar said that the party had fostered “a cult of personality” around Netanyahu and become a “tool for the personal interests of the person in charge, including matters relating to his criminal trial.”