After the departure of Interior Minister Gideon Saar, who announced he is taking a hiatus from politics, Likud party leader Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is pushing to hold party leadership primaries. Mr. Netanyahu is working with Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz, who remains a Netanyahu loyalist, to move up the internal party election. Saar represented the growing opposition to Mr. Netanyahu from within the party and many believed he had a realistic chance of unseating the prime minister as party leader in the next primary elections.

Netanyahu and Katz hope that the result of the elections will be a strengthening of their camp in the party as they hope to appoint those loyal to them in key positions in the party’s Metzudat Ze’ev headquarters. The two have decided to oust the party’s CEO, Gadi Arieli, appointing their own people in his place. Opponents tell the media that Netanyahu and Katz are working hard to ensure the outcome of the internal election as well as to remove anyone that will not be a “yes man” and follow them blindly.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)