The conventional wisdom about Benjamin Netanyahu has always been that no one can outmaneuver him from the hawkish flank — that he occupies the rightmost viable position in Israeli politics and defends it with preternatural skill. Gideon Sa'ar, the former justice minister and longtime Likud defector, is now testing that assumption with a direct challenge that reframes Netanyahu not as Israel's security maximalist but as its compromiser-in-chief.
Sa'ar's calculation is brutally simple: after years of war in Gaza and escalating tensions with Hezbollah, a substantial portion of the Israeli electorate has concluded that Netanyahu's approach has been insufficiently decisive. The prime minister's willingness to entertain ceasefire negotiations, his management of the hostage crisis, his deference to American pressure — all of this, in Sa'ar's telling, represents weakness dressed up as statecraft.
The fracture on the right
What makes this challenge dangerous for Netanyahu is not Sa'ar's personal popularity, which remains modest, but the permission structure it creates. For years, figures like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich have criticized Netanyahu from within his coalition while ultimately remaining loyal. Sa'ar is offering them — and their voters — an alternative home. He is arguing that the nationalist right no longer needs Netanyahu as its standard-bearer, that the movement has outgrown the man.
This is a significant departure from previous challenges. When Benny Gantz mounted his campaigns, he positioned himself as the responsible centrist alternative. Sa'ar is making no such concession to moderation. He is running as the candidate who will do what Netanyahu talks about but never quite delivers.
The American factor
Washington will watch this contest with considerable unease. The Biden and now post-Biden administrations have found Netanyahu difficult enough; a Sa'ar government would likely prove even less amenable to American counsel. Sa'ar has been explicit that Israeli security decisions should be made in Jerusalem, not calibrated to congressional sentiment or State Department preferences. His vision of Israeli sovereignty is more absolute, less transactional.
For American policymakers accustomed to treating Netanyahu as the ceiling of Israeli hawkishness, the prospect of someone outbidding him represents a genuine recalibration.
Our take
Netanyahu has survived challenges before, and his political obituary has been written prematurely many times. But Sa'ar's gambit is different in kind. He is not asking Israelis to choose security or democracy, right or left. He is asking them whether Netanyahu is still the toughest option available — and in the current climate, that question has no obvious answer. The Israeli right may be about to discover that it contains multitudes, and not all of them answer to Bibi.
