Saar, Longtime Netanyahu Ally, Emerges as his Top Challenger

In this August 26, 2012 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, speaks to then Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar as they arrive to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. (AP)
In this August 26, 2012 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, speaks to then Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar as they arrive to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. (AP)
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Saar, Longtime Netanyahu Ally, Emerges as his Top Challenger

In this August 26, 2012 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, speaks to then Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar as they arrive to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. (AP)
In this August 26, 2012 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, speaks to then Israeli Education Minister Gideon Saar as they arrive to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. (AP)

For years, Gideon Saar was one of Israeli Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s most loyal and vocal supporters, serving as Cabinet secretary and government minister.

Now, the telegenic Saar, armed with extraordinary political savvy and a searing grudge against his former boss, could prove to be Netanyahu’s greatest challenge.

After breaking away from the Likud Party to form his own faction, Saar is running against Netanyahu in March elections and has emerged as the long-serving leader's top rival.

The challenge caps the stunning decline of the Saar-Netanyahu relationship, pitting a cunning political mind against his former mentor in a deeply personal battle drenched in past grievances.

A secular resident of culturally liberal Tel Aviv with a celebrity news anchor wife, Saar, 54, is a hardline nationalist long seen as an heir to the Likud Party leadership. After unsuccessfully challenging Netanyahu in a leadership race and then being denied a government position as retribution, Saar last month broke out on his own. He said his aim was to topple Netanyahu for turning the Likud into a tool for personal survival at a time when he is on trial on corruption charges.

Saar’s chances of becoming prime minister in the next elections are far from certain and polling forecasts his New Hope party coming in second place after Likud. But his entry into the race reconfigures the playing field and could complicate Netanyahu’s task of forming a coalition government, perhaps sidelining the Israeli leader after more than a decade at the helm.

“If there’s someone who can beat Netanyahu it is Gideon Saar," said Sharren Haskel, a former Likud lawmaker who quit the party to join Saar. "He is the only one who can stand up against Netanyahu because of his ideology, his experience and his capabilities.”

Haskel, together with other Saar allies in Likud, concocted a plan to thwart a bill that might avert elections. In a late-night maneuver, they defied the party by skipping the vote or voting against the bill, catching Netanyahu off guard and prompting the government's collapse. They even coordinated the move with members of opposing parties who hid in the Knesset parking lot until moments before the vote, attesting to Saar's political savvy, the lengths he is prepared to go to bring down Netanyahu and his potential ability to reach across the aisle.

While Saar has brought hope to some that Netanyahu’s rule is on the rocks, a victory would probably not mean significant changes in policies, particularly toward the Palestinians. Saar, like Netanyahu, is a hardline nationalist opposed to Palestinian independence.

These right-wing credentials appear to be playing to his favor. Contrary to other recent Netanyahu challengers who have tried to appeal to a broader, centrist swath of Israelis, Saar is siphoning away both the votes of disillusioned Netanyahu supporters as well as Likud lawmakers. At least four defectors have joined him, including former Netanyahu confidant Zeev Elkin.

“He is attacking from the right,” said Hebrew University political scientist Reuven Hazan. “It is a different game entirely.”

Three previous elections since 2019 ended in deadlock between Netanyahu and his then-challenger, former military chief Benny Gantz. The most recent vote in March culminated in a power-sharing agreement that crumbled last month after months of dysfunction.

Saar entered politics in 1999, serving as Cabinet secretary in the first Netanyahu government. He became a Likud legislator in 2002 and remained loyal to the party and Netanyahu, even when the party plummeted in 2006 elections.

Since Netanyahu’s return to the premiership in 2009, Saar has held the powerful posts of education and interior minister, pushing hardline policies against illegal migrants alongside a more socially liberal doctrine that extended public education to preschoolers. He repeatedly won the top spot in Likud party primaries, just beneath Netanyahu.

After marrying popular Israeli news anchor Geula Even-Saar — a second marriage for both of them — he took a five-year hiatus from public life. Saar returned to politics in 2019, but was promptly confined to the backbenches after challenging Netanyahu in a Likud primary.

Now, freed from Netanyahu's grasp on Likud, Saar may have a fighting chance.

In announcing his departure, Saar said he could no longer serve under Netanyahu.

“A change in the country’s leadership is needed,” Saar said. “Today, Israel needs unity and stability. Netanyahu can’t, and won’t be able to, provide either.”

Since he bolted, the Likud has tried to paint Saar as a leftist in disguise, but his record indicates otherwise.

Saar has been a longtime opponent of the two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, the longstanding international consensus for ending the conflict.

“He is more right-wing than Bibi by far,” said political analyst Avraham Diskin, who said he has known Saar for years. He was referring to Netanyahu by his nickname. “But he is a pragmatic person, not a fanatic. He is cautious and level-headed,” he said, indicating that he may rein himself in under pressure from the international community, reported The Associated Press.

Saar supports building up West Bank settlements and annexing parts of the West Bank, while granting some autonomy to the Palestinians living in the territory. That would fall far short of their demands for an independent state that includes all of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza. Israel captured the three areas in 1967, though it withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

“There is no two-state solution; there is at most a two-state slogan,” Saar told the Times of Israel in 2018. “The establishment of a Palestinian state a few miles away from Ben-Gurion Airport and Israel’s major population centers would create a security and demographic danger to Israel.”

While some Israelis who don't espouse those views are still eager to support Saar as a replacement to Netanyahu, others say his rise only elevates another hardline nationalist.

“The next prime minister of Israel will be a full-blown total man of the right, uncompromising and pitiless,” columnist Gideon Levy wrote in the liberal Haaretz daily. “The choice is between two ultra-nationalists, Netanyahu or Saar: Bibi or Gidi. There probably will be no other viable candidate. This is a dismal reality, but a very sobering one.”



Rising Seas and Shifting Sands Attack Ancient Alexandria from Below 

A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
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Rising Seas and Shifting Sands Attack Ancient Alexandria from Below 

A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)
A view of buildings on the corniche in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, Egypt, April 20, 2025. (Reuters)

From her ninth-floor balcony over Alexandria's seafront, Eman Mabrouk looked down at the strip of sand that used to be the wide beach where she played as a child.

"The picture is completely different now," she said. The sea has crept closer, the concrete barriers have got longer and the buildings around her have cracked and shifted.

Every year 40 of them collapse across Egypt's second city, up from one on average a decade ago, a study shows.

The storied settlement that survived everything from bombardment by the British in the 1880s to attacks by crusaders in the 1160s is succumbing to a subtler foe infiltrating its foundations.

The warming waters of the Mediterranean are rising, part of a global phenomenon driven by climate change. In Alexandria, that is leading to coastal erosion and sending saltwater seeping through the sandy substrate, undermining buildings from below, researchers say.

"This is why we see the buildings in Alexandria being eroded from the bottom up," said Essam Heggy, a water scientist at the University of Southern California who co-wrote the study published in February describing a growing crisis in Alexandria and along the whole coast.

The combination of continuous seawater rises, ground subsidence and coastal erosion means Alexandria’s coastline has receded on average 3.5 meters a year over the last 20 years, he told Reuters.

"For many people who see that climatic change is something that will happen in the future and we don’t need to worry about it, it’s actually happening right now, right here," Heggy said.

The situation is alarming enough when set out in the report - "Soaring Building Collapses in Southern Mediterranean Coasts" in the journal "Earth's Future". For Mabrouk, 50, it has been part of day-to-day life for years.

She had to leave her last apartment when the building started moving.

"It eventually got slanted. I mean, after two years, we were all ... leaning," she told Reuters. "If you put something on the table, you would feel like it was rolling."

BARRIERS, BULLDOZERS, CRACKS

Egypt's government has acknowledged the problem and promised action. Submerged breakwaters reduce coastal wave action and truckloads of sand replenish stripped beaches.

Nine concrete sea barriers have been set up "to protect the delta and Alexandria from the impact of rising sea waves," Alexandria's governor, Ahmed Khaled Hassan, said.

The barriers stretch out to sea, piles of striking geometric shapes, their clear curves and lines standing out against the crumbling, flaking apartment blocks on the land.

Authorities are trying to get in ahead of the collapses by demolishing buildings at risk.

Around 7,500 were marked for destruction and 55,000 new housing units will be built, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly told a crowd as he stood on one of the concrete barriers on July 14.

"There isn't a day that passes without a partial or complete collapse of at least one building that already had a demolition order," Madbouly said.

Some are hopeful the measures can make a difference.

"There are no dangers now ... They have made their calculations," coffee shop owner Shady Mostafa said as he watched builders working on one of the barriers.

Others are less sure. Alexandria's 70-km (45-mile) long coastal zone was marked down as the most vulnerable in the whole Mediterranean basin in the February report.

Around 2% of the city's housing stock – or about 7,000 buildings – were probably unsafe, it added.

Every day, more people are pouring into the city - Alexandria's population has nearly doubled to about 5.8 million in the last 25 years, swollen by workers and tourists, according to Egypt's statistics agency CAPMAS. Property prices keep going up, despite all the risks, trackers show.

Sea levels are rising across the world, but they are rising faster in the Mediterranean than in many other bodies of water, partly because the relative shallowness of its sea basin means it is warming up faster.

The causes may be global, but the impacts are local, said 26-year-old Alexandria resident Ahmed al-Ashry.

"There's a change in the buildings, there's a change in the streets," he told Reuters.

"Every now and then we try to renovate the buildings, and in less than a month, the renovations start to fall apart. Our neighbors have started saying the same thing, that cracks have started to appear."