The Israeli ruling party, Likud has announced that incumbent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won a landslide victory in the primary, ensuring his leadership of the right-wing party in the national elections in March.
The official results released by the Likud in the morning showed that Netanyahu won 72.5 percent of the party members’ votes while his rival Gideon Saar, a lawmaker of Likud, gained 27.5 percent of the votes.
Netanyahu claimed victory, writing on Twitter: “Great victory!”
In a broadcast statement, Saar congratulated Netanyahu for his victory and said that he would support Netanyahu and the Likud in the up-coming national elections.
Saar, a veteran politician and former education minister, is widely seen as posing the hardest challenge yet to Netanyahu’s decades-long chairmanship of the Likud.
The embattled Israeli leader is facing criminal indictments in three separate corruption scandals in which he is charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. However, Netanyahu denies any wrongdoing and says the charges are part of “a witch-hunt.”
