Sa’ar: If Netanyahu wins Likud primary, he’ll fail again to form government

Likud MK Gideon Sa’ar, who is mounting the first serious challenge to Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership of the party in 14 years, warns that a Netanyahu-led Likud will remain unable to form a government after the March 2 elections.

Netanyahu has twice failed to form a government after the April 9 and September 17 elections, and refused the Blue and White party’s conditions for joining a unity government with it last month. The main condition: That he commit not to seek parliamentary immunity from prosecution in three corruption cases.

Likud has tentatively set leadership primaries for December 26.

“If Netanyahu wins the primaries, there won’t be a government,” Sa’ar warns in an onstage interview at a financial services conference in Ashkelon.

“We have to preserve Likud’s democratic tradition for two reasons: because Likud is a democratic movement, and because if it stops being democratic it will fall,” he says, responding to Netanyahu supporters in the party who have accused him in recent days of “betraying” the longtime premier by running against him for party leader.