Sa’ar you ready for this? 6 things to know for December 26

1. Exit, stage right: Scenes of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being whisked offstage at a political rally as rocket sirens sounded in the southern city of Ashkelon on Wednesday lead the front pages of Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth on Thursday.

• The deja vu debacle was the second such incident since September, when the prime minister was similarly rushed to shelter in the southern city of Ashdod as a rocket was fired from Gaza, mere days before the national election.  Wednesday’s incident came a day before the Likud leadership primary.
• “The music was very loud, we didn’t hear the siren,” Eli Gabbai, a Likud activist from Ashkelon tells Yedioth, adding, “Bibi [Netanyahu] got off the stage pretty calmly, no one ran. The mayor was with him and five minutes later he returned to the stage. None of the activists left the area. The explosion [of the Iron Dome interception] was heard while he was walking to the shelter such that it didn’t really make a difference.”
• In Yedioth Ahronoth, Yossi Yehoshua links the rocket attack to the emerging long-term ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. “Whoever fired the rocket from Gaza last night, apart from the desire to embarrass Netanyahu in a similar move to the prime minister’s conference in Ashdod in September, knew about the progress in the negotiations for a deal, and was concerned about it. Despite this, after the predictable retaliation by the IDF, the contacts between the sides will continue because this is the desire of both sides right now.”
• IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi had addressed the progress in the ceasefire talks in a speech on Wednesday. According to Kohavi, last month’s two-day battle between the IDF and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second most powerful terror group in Gaza, made such a ceasefire more possible. Unlike in previous bouts in the Strip, Israel did not target Hamas facilities in that flare-up, instead focusing its attacks almost solely on the PIJ.
• “As I speak, there’s an opportunity. Hamas is back dictating the order of the day — even if there’s a rocket or mortar here or there, which we won’t accept,” Kohavi said, referring to recent attacks from Gaza, which military officials have indicated were the work of smaller, more radical terror groups, not Hamas.

2. Sa’ar we there yet? The Likud leadership primary, pitting Netanyahu against challenger Gideon Sa’ar, gets underway on Thursday, with results expected overnight. While Netanyahu is widely expected to handily win the leadership vote, pundits are split on how much of the vote Sa’ar would need to siphon away from Netayahu to justify his gambit and walk away with his head held high.

• In Israel Hayom, the paper’s political correspondent Yehuda Shlezinger writes: “How will it end?  It’s impossible to know. It’s in the hands of 116,000 people. In Sa’ar’s case, it can be said that if he brings home 20%-30%, it will be considered a total failure. 30%-40% is completely fine. 40% and above will be considered an amazing achievement. Anything can happen.”
• Writes The Times of Israel’s Raoul Wootliff: “Neither side has released internal polls, but sources from both camps say they are expecting an emphatic victory for the prime minister. The only report of internal polling, mentioned by Channel 12 as an unsourced side note two weeks ago, said that 75 percent of the some 115,000 Likud members supported Netanyahu, to just 25% for Sa’ar.
• “Sa’ar allies are now suggesting that gaining 30% of the vote could still be considered a success. “No one has got close to that before, and we are talking about the incumbent prime minister,” a source close to Sa’ar told The Times of Israel this week, tempering expectations. (Now-Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon scored 19% to Netanyahu’s 75% in the last contest, in 2014).”

3. Make it rain: As the primary voting begins, both sides are projecting optimism and urging supporters to go out and vote despite a bout of dreary wintry weather.

• The pro-Netanyahu Israel Hayom cheers the leadership race, under the headline “Democracy in Likud,” in an apparent jab at other political parties, such as Blue and White, that do not hold internal leadership races.
• “Victory or defeat? An ouster or a humiliation? Netanyahu or Sa’ar? Though many parties have abandoned the democratic system, and after many years of dull and boring primary votes, Likud gears up today for primaries to determine who will lead the party — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Gideon Sa’ar,” it reports.
• The paper quotes a source close to Netanyahu as denying the prime minister has focused his campaign on attacking Sa’ar. “Contrary to what has been reported in the media, Netanyahu did not attack and did not speak out against Sa’ar.” The source says “Netanyahu is not concerned by the primaries, he won’t lose.”
• A source close to Sa’ar tell the paper: “There will be a big surprise today. Mostly in the big cities.”
• Israel Hayom also runs two op-ed pieces by Netanyahu and Sa’ar side by side, with the former highlighting Israel’s economic and diplomatic successes under his leadership and the latter promising “new hope” and an end to the never-ending consecutive rounds of elections that have failed to yield a government.
• The paper, along with the Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz dailies, also spotlight the rainy weather nationwide, which could depress turnout and keep ballot boxes open even later than the extended 11 p.m. deadline.

4. Bring me back to the days of yore: The Likud primary also evokes some wistful longing for a different Israel — or a different Likud.

• In a column in Yedioth Ahronoth, former Likud minister Limor Livnat writes that she is pained by the acrimonious political atmosphere in her home party. “Likud has always flaunted its internal democracy. We were so proud of that it that we never saw in a challenge to the leader — even if it was an incumbent prime minister — an act of ‘betrayal,’ ‘subversion,’ ‘putsch,’ or any sort of declaration of war, as some have dubbed Gideon Sa’ar’s decision to run against Netanyahu… How painful it is to see the movement that was my home from the moment I was released from the IDF and began my university studies… turning into a place in which the leader is more important than the idea.”
• In an editorial outlining Sa’ar’s hawkish positions and refusal to openly criticize Netanyahu’s run under criminal indictment, Haaretz describes the race as offering “a choice between two bad options, and they are a resounding reminder of how pathetically low Israel’s ruling party has sunk.”
• The left-wing paper’s columnist Uri Misgav gloomily takes it a step further, writing: “Likud voters today go to primaries to choose their party leader. Their holiday is a day of disaster for the State of Israel. In the past decade, and particularly over the past few years, Likud has destroyed Israel.”

5. No, you’re a war criminal: The International Criminal Court chief prosecutor’s announcement over the weekend that she would probe alleged Israeli war crimes against Palestinians is still making waves in the press, albeit now with a slightly more evenhanded approach toward the chief prosecutor in the case.

• Yedioth Ahronoth continues to probe the past of Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, ahead of a weekend edition article on her past as a senior official in the government of former Gambian president Yahya Jammeh, who is accused of gross human rights abuses. But for the first time this week, it quotes her.
• “I have nothing to explain and my conscience is clear,” she is quoted as telling the paper through a spokesperson, adding that she would happily testify to the Gambia commission exploring the human rights abuses to counter claims by witnesses of her collusion.
• Writes The Times of Israel’s Raphael Ahren in a profile of the chief prosecutor: “Several senior officials in today’s Gambia, including Justice Minister Abubacarr Marie Tambadou and the lead council of the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission, Essa Faal, agree that Bensouda likely had no more than a passing role in any atrocities. Bensouda herself denies knowing about the torture of the two witnesses, claiming that she was responsible for eventually dropping the charges against them.”

6. Give it a shot: The papers are also sounding the alarm on the deadly strain of flu this year, which has seen a dozen deaths this season.

• The recent victims this week include a 19-year-old man, a 14-year-old girl, and a baby.
• Health officials tell Haaretz the number of those who have fallen ill with the disease is higher than previous years.
• The media exposure on the flu deaths appears to have a ripple effect, with tens of thousands of Israelis rushing to clinics to be vaccinated on Wednesday, according to Haaretz. Some 18,000 obtained the vaccine on Wednesday through the Clalit healthcare provider, and 6,000 through the Meuhedet provider, it reports. The Maccabi provider reported some “ten thousand” had shown up Wednesday for a flu shot.