He was as close as anyone could be to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He served as his Cabinet secretary and held Netanyahu’s hand throughout his last year in power before his 1999 defeat by Ehud Barak. He stayed by his side in the Likud and helped him rebuild the party in 2006 after the late Ariel Sharon split to form his own party. Over the years, he helped Netanyahu dismantle governments and alliances, and build coalitions. This week, Former Likud Minister Gideon Saar blocked Netanyahu’s reelection. The votes his New Hope party poached from the Likud in the March 23 elections deprived Netanyahu of the 61 Knesset seats he desperately needs to form a governing coalition.

Saar lost the battle, coming in at a disappointing six seats, but he has probably won the war. Short of a miracle, Netanyahu not only lacks sufficient support to form a government, on April 5 he must present himself in court for the start of the evidentiary stage in his corruption trial. This time, even this undisputed political genius will have a hard time surviving.

Saar quit the Likud and formed New Hope in December 2020 with great fanfare, immediately polling at more than 20 Knesset seats. Although the final results are a far cry from that peak, he can console himself with having deprived his former party of at least three seats (according to assessments of pollsters), and thus achieving his goal of weakening the Likud. He accomplished what the Blue and White party, led by three generals, failed to achieve in three consecutive elections in 2019 and 2020, bringing the Likud down to 30 seats, its poorest showing since 2015.

The seats Saar apparently took from the Likud were the crucial ones Netanyahu needed to succeed in his fourth consecutive attempt to form a stable government. For Saar, the results were both sweet and bitter. And yet, based on talks with his associates, if he had to choose, he would still have preferred handing Netanyahu gaining a victory for himself. And that was the exact outcome.