Netanyahu remains party leader
Big boost for PM, but tough election looms
Israel’s legally embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu easily fended off a rare challenge to his leadership of the Likud Party, reaffirming himself as the dominant figure of Israel’s nationalist camp after two humiliating failures to form a government.
Israel’s political gridlock had thrust Netanyahu into the unfamiliar position of having to defend his stewardship of Likud, with former cabinet minister Gideon Saar mounting the first serious challenge to him in 14 years.
Final results from Thursday’s vote showed the prime minister re-elected as Likud’s chairman with 72.5 per cent of the votes against Saar’s 27.5 per cent.
Netanyahu will now lead the party into Israel’s third election in less than a year on March 2, but he faces an uphill battle there, with polls suggesting it will end in another stalemate.
In a speech to supporters later Friday, he promised to define Israel’s final borders and reiterated his plan to annex West Bank territory the Palestinians claim for a state. He invoked the support he’s won from U.S. President Donald Trump and vowed to win U.S. endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over West Bank land where Jewish settlements stand.
The Trump administration has departed from longstanding American policy with regards to the Israeli-palestinian conflict to adopt Israel’s positions on a series of contentious matters. He’s moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv after recognizing the holy city as Israel’s capital, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the section of the Golan Heights won from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war, and declared that Jewish settlements don’t violate international law.
These positions have alienated the Palestinians, and will encumber efforts to move ahead with the U.S. plan for Middle East peace, whose presentation has been held up by Israel’s political impasse.
In both of the previous national elections this year, Likud has polled neck and neck with former military chief Benny Gantz’s Blue and White bloc. That political newcomer Gantz could manage such a formidable showing is testament to the despair many Israelis have at the prospect of another nationalist government led by a man tainted by corruption allegations.
Netanyahu supporters, however, have stood by him, accepting his denials of wrongdoing.