New Hope Party
In December 2020, Gideon Sa’ar left Likud to form his own party called New Hope.
Two other members of the Likud, Michal Shir and Sharron Haskel joined Sa’ar. They were followed by Minister of Higher Education Ze’ev Elkin who resigned his post.
Sa’ar hopes to win enough votes to form a right-wing coalition without Likud to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “In order to have, now, a stable government,” he told the Washington Institute, “we need a government that will not rely on extremists.”
“I believe that today, the main challenges of Israel are domestic. Unfortunately, no one is dealing with them right now. I am speaking about bringing back stability, which is not only political stability and influence, of course but economic stability, social stability.”
“In terms of our relations with the U.S.,” he said, “we must restore the principle [of] bipartisan support in America, and we must also work with all segments of American civil society.”
Sa’ar opposes the creation of a Palestinian state:
Regarding settlements Sa’ar said, I totally oppose evacuation of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. I think this idea belongs to the past. It was proven it was not contributing to stability, to peace. We must find out how to live together. I don’t think to uproot communities, Jewish or Arab, is helpful to the cause of peace.
He added, I support the idea of implementing the Israeli law over our communities in Judea and Samaria. It is something that continues to be an Israeli objective. I am not speaking about the Palestinian populated areas, I am speaking about our communities. We have there a half of a million of our residents and they should live under the Israeli law.
Sa’ar also believes peace requires a regional approach: “I think that it is very important to combine our neighboring states, Jordan and Egypt, in the solutions themselves….I think on certain issues we can have trilateral agreements: on tourism, the economy, the environment, and other issues. We must try to find an alternative with these two principles of separation and of autonomy without the ability to hurt our security, and a regional component.”
When asked about the situation of Israeli Arabs, he said, “The challenge is integration. I think today we have more and more [Arab] Israeli citizens that feel they want to be integrated into the state and to have futures for their kids.”
“In terms of the ultra orthodox community, we also have challenges. As the minister of education in the past, I promoted higher education. Among the ultraorthodox I opened educational [and] professional schools for students that dropped from the world of the Torah, from yeshiva. And I think we should do more in order to integrate them into the economic sector and in our society….When I was minister of education I dealt, for example, with how we can create equal opportunities for the girls who are learning in the ultraorthodox system, in order that they will easily be integrated in higher education, and also in work.”
Sources: Gideon Sa’ar,
Wikipedia“.
“New Leadership For Israel? A Conversation With Gideon Saar,” Washington Institute, (February 10, 2021).