Sa’ar slams Netanyahu for ‘undemocratic’ behavior over presidency

Outgoing Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Friday for acting undemocratically in trying to prevent the election of Reuven Rivlin as state president last spring, and said his relationship with the prime minister had collapsed over the issue.

High-flying Likud MK Sa’ar, No. 2 to Netanyahu on the party’s slate in the 2013 elections, surprisingly announced Wednesday that he was quitting the Interior Ministry job and taking a break from political life.

Channel 2 reported Friday that Netanyahu has offered Communications Minister Gilad Erdan the interior minister portfolio in Sa’ar’s place. Erdan, who currently holds a seat in the eight-member security cabinet, would retain that cabinet role if he accepts the Interior Ministry position, the TV report said, although Sa’ar is not a member of the inner council as interior minister.

Erdan reportedly asked the prime minister for some time to consider the offer. He has been said for some time to be considering an alternative offer — to be appointed Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, a post he turned down several years ago.

Sa’ar, who said Wednesday he’d be stepping down for a while after the upcoming Jewish High Holidays in order to spend more time with his family — he recently married TV news anchor Geula Even — told Channel 2 Friday that he has no regrets about his decision, and no intention of leaving the Likud.

Speculation had surfaced that Sa’ar might join forces with fellow ex-Likud minister Moshe Kahlon and form a new party, but Sa’ar dismissed the possibility. “I am a Likud man,” he said, adding that he always tells “my friend” Kahlon that the two are better off in the Likud.

Sa’ar said that he spoke with Netanyahu after his announcement Wednesday, but that the prime minister made no effort to dissuade him from leaving. When asked whether he was disappointed by that, Sa’ar said “When there are no expectations, there’s no disappointment.”

In a second interview Friday night, on Channel 10, Sa’ar said that his working relationship with Netanyahu, previously close, collapsed during last spring’s process of electing a successor to president Shimon Peres.

Netanyahu not only opposed Likud candidate (and eventual winner) Rivlin, said Sa’ar, but also sought to change or cancel the entire electoral process in order to prevent Rivlin getting the job, which Sa’ar considered to be “undemocratic… You can’t change the rules of  the game during the game.”

“I told him I’d oppose” any such move, “and I did so,” said Sa’ar. Netanyahu subsequently had some “unpleasant” things to say to him, “but my position was clear… and correct.”

Since then, he said, the ties between the two were “less good, certainly.” The relationship “changed in the most fundamental way.”

Still, Sa’ar said he was neither bitter nor angry in taking his political time out, and did not rule out a return. Had there been a chance to seek the leadership of the Likud, he said, he would have considered it.

He also said Kahlon should come back to the party, and not compete against the Likud in the next elections. A poll Friday said a new party featuring Kahlon and Sa’ar could draw 28% of votes in an election.