It’s not every day that a high-profile politician stands before the nation and dramatically announces that he is leaving one party to start a new one.
New Hope-United Right head Gideon Sa’ar has done that twice within less than four years.
In December 2020, Sa’ar – a seasoned politician with a long-standing career in the Likud, during which he served as education minister and interior minister – made a dramatic press conference announcement.
He declared his departure from the Likud, a party he had represented in the Knesset for some 13 years, to form New Hope. As part of this party, he served as justice minister in the Bennett-Lapid governments.
And then again in March, Sa’ar, who had merged with Benny Gantz’s Blue and White to form the National Unity Party in the interim, announced at a meeting of his faction that he was leaving National Unity and creating a new faction: United Right.
Both announcements generated a buzz.
Following Sa’ar’s announcement in 2020, the polls smiled on him and predicted he would win 16 seats in the upcoming election in 2021, which would make his the third-biggest party in the land.
Those predictions were short-lived, and he won a disappointing six seats in those 2021 elections.
The polls following his announcement in March were far less sanguine than after his first announcement, with a Channel 13 poll giving him six seats the day after his announcement.
Sa'ar's fall downhill
It has been downhill from there, with six of the seven major polls taken since April 15 showing that his party would not pass the 3.25% election threshold needed to make it into the Knesset.
Of these seven polls, only a Maariv poll published on April 26 found Sa’ar’s party eking into the Knesset. Last Friday, the weekly Maariv poll had him considerably below the electoral threshold, even behind the Labor Party.
This trajectory paints a picture of a politician who may have overestimated his own appeal and drawing power.
If these polls are indicative, the Israeli public may be content with a political landscape that does not feature Sa’ar or the other members of his faction – Ze’ev Elkin and Yifat Shasha-Biton, who have both switched parties four times, and Sharren Haskel.
In a 103 FM radio interview on Sunday, Sa’ar admitted that the polls are not good.
“Nevertheless,” he said, “I think there is a large audience that is indeed very interested in a political force that represents a right-wing, nationalist view, different from the approach of Netanyahu’s 64-member coalition.”
Sa’ar said he believes the public wants to see a merger of smaller parties that will “present an alternative.”
Sa’ar asserted the public does not like to vote for small political parties. “They can appreciate you and respect you, but most of the voters, when they go to the polls, vote for the prime minister.”
Asked if he was in contact with Yisrael Beytenu head Avigdor Liberman about some type of merger of non-Likud moderate right-wing parties, Sa’ar replied: “Yes, there is a dialogue between various parties that are in the state-right, liberal-right area code who understand the situation well. I hope it will succeed. In the final analysis, I think, and hear what the public is saying: there is a great desire to see such a move. If it happens, it can succeed.”
Considering that the polls show that without this type of merger, Sa’ar’s party will disappear after the next elections, his desire for a merger with Liberman or other non-religious, right-of-center parties is perfectly understandable.
But there may be a flaw in Sa’ar’s reasoning.
What the public wants, according to Sa’ar’s analysis and his desire to merge with other right-of-center parties, is the same faces in new political formations. According to this reading, the public wants to see him, Elkin, Shasha-Biton and Haskel back on the public stage under a different political structure.
But Sa’ar might be badly misreading the public sentiment. Perhaps what the public is looking for is not old faces in new political formations but rather new faces in new political formations.
Sa’ar believes people want to drink old wine in new bottles but may wake up to find that what they really want is new wine in new bottles.
Sa’ar is not alone in this. Various center-right personalities are spending a lot of energy trying to figure out what new political configuration might appeal to the public.
Former prime minister Naftali Bennett, former communication minister Yoaz Hendel, and former justice minister Ayelet Shaked are all looking for that magic combination that will catapult them back into the center of the Israeli political drama.
But there may be a degree of self-delusion here. In light of the failure of the political leadership on both sides of the pro-Netanyahu, anti-Netanyahu fault line that led to the October 7 catastrophe, and in light of the failures of political leadership since then, what many want to see now are new, fresh hands on the steering wheel.
A “toss ‘em all out” sentiment is palpable among wide swaths of the public as a result of October 7.
Sa’ar’s poor showing since leaving Gantz’s party and quitting the government indicates he overestimated his public standing. According to these polls, no one is pining to see Sa’ar, Elkin, Shasha-Biton, and Haskel back in the game.
The problem with much of the current polling is that, in most cases, the pollsters ask people who they would vote for among the current players on the field.
Once in a while, they throw in a question about a party led by Bennett, Hendel, or former Mossad head Yossi Cohen to shake things up – but all of them are, in some capacity or another, players identified with the failed security doctrines and destructive political divisions of the past.
When new elections next roll around – meaning, when game time arrives again – there will inevitably be new players on the field, people relatively new to the voting public sitting in the stands.
Wars mint heroes, and this war has minted a number of them, some of whom will surely find their way into politics in time for the next elections.
And those players – not Sa’ar in some kind of rejiggered new political formation – are likely to be the true game-changers.