Gantz and Sa'ar announced a joint run: "They intend to establish a broad national unity government"/Contact
Gideon Sa'ar's decision this evening (Tuesday) to dissolve the partnership with the state camp has been brewing for many months.
The tensions between him and the chairman of the state camp, Benny Gantz, began as early as during the joint election campaign. In their last year and a half together, whenever an ideological issue related to the classic dividing line between left and right came up, the ideological gaps between the two surfaced again and again: Gantz's classic slogan - " "There is no right and there is no left" - did not hold true in real life when it comes to the settlements and the Palestinian Authority, when Sa'ar and Ze'ev Elkin were in the same faction.
But political relations also cooled at the same time. Gantz procrastinated on implementing his commitment to work to establish a joint party, with a body of voters and primaries, and Sa'ar decided to deal with New Hope as a separate brand in the elections to the local authorities, and began to rebuild itself as an independent brand.
The slogan "there is no right and no left" did not work in the test of reality.
Gantz and Sa'ar announce the partnership in 2022/Reuven Castro
Tensions escalated dramatically following the war.
Gantz did not insist on the addition of Sa'ar to the war cabinet alongside him and Gadi Eisenkot upon the establishment of the emergency government - a decision that only sharpened the trend of secession that had begun even earlier.
During the war, Sa'ar repeatedly criticized the policy of the war cabinet and attacked Netanyahu from the right, and at the same time began to warm his relations with him in periodic personal meetings - and also with the Likudniks who dream of his return home, to the right.
Sa'ar vehemently denies that he intends to return to Likud, but his split from the state camp is intended to renew his independence as a significant political player on the right.
He will allow him to conduct negotiations on joining the war cabinet, as he demanded, and perhaps even for a permanent position in the government - which will keep him a member of the coalition even when Gantz retires from the emergency government.
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It is not impossible that he would be happy to add Sa'ar to the war cabinet.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu/Official website, Roy Avraham/L.A.M., Sound: Yehezkel Kandil/L.A.M.
Sa'ar again emphasizes in interviews with the media that he does not intend to return to Likud, but with the new-old branding "state right", he is also branding himself as a potential leader for the huge mandate bank of right-wing voters in the next elections.
At the moment, this bank is parked with Gantz - but in the run-up to the elections he will look for a right-wing framework, code name: Naftali Bennett or Yossi Cohen - and Sa'ar wants to stand out and stand out as one of the candidates to lead it.
He aims to leverage the momentum of Tikva New Hope's successes in the municipal elections, with candidates who won the party's support in Ramat Gan, Gedera and Pardes Hana, for example, also into his personal political arena.
It is not impossible that Netanyahu would be happy to add Sa'ar to the war cabinet, and to pad his coalition with a future security network, but partner Itamar Ben Gabir has already complicated matters with his demand to join the war cabinet as well.
Either way, the split between Sa'ar and Gantz increases Netanyahu's basket of options in the future.
Gantz, who was not informed in advance of Sa'ar's decision, responded with a cool tweet: "Thank you and good luck."
His demand complicated matters.
Minister Itamar Ben Gabir/Flash 90, Chaim Goldberg
Sa'ar is the fourth partner to dissolve the partnership with Gantz - in five years in politics: Bogi Ya'alon, Yair Lapid and Gabi Ashkenazi were there before him, which already indicates a serial failure.
Sa'ar's split was predictable - not a question of if, but of when - but Gantz did nothing to stop it, and will therefore be left without a third of his original campaign.
More on the same topic:
Gaza war
War of Iron Swords
Benny Gantz
Gideon Saar
Itamar Ben Gabir