Gidon Sa'ar
Gidon Sa'arPhoto: Jonathan Sindell/Flash 90

Former Likud minister Gidon Sa'ar said in a radio interview that during the coming year he may return to the political arena.

"When I left I explained that I was taking a break," said Sa'ar. "I did not say I was leaving, only taking a break because I wanted to live a different type of life with my family and I am very happy today. No day passes without a lot of people addressing me and asking me to return and if this is the situation I will have to return. If I see that the public wills it at the relevant time, I will draw the necessary conclusions."

Sa'ar says he is ready to return to politics. "If I look at the coming year, I feel it is a year when things will happen. Maybe because I will turn 50, maybe because of the impending birth (of a child with his second wife Geula Even-Sa'ar). I am always optimistic before Rosh Hashanah and this year I am particularly optimistic."

Sa'ar said that he is motivated by a sense of mission. "I have been a member of Knesset, a minister and cabinet secretary - all very senior positions. If I am thinking about a return to public life, it is not for egoistic reasons but from a sense of mission. A person cannot live his life alone and say that everything else does not interest him."

Sa'ar criticized the present leadership and claimed that it ought to improve the social situation in Israel. "The job of a leader today is to unite, not divide, to find the common denominator, to close the fissures in society. To see the diverse and unique aspects that everyone has, but to realize that we all have a joint fate, a joint mission, a strong connection not just to the past but also to the future.

"We must improve the level of loving our fellow man as we love ourselves both on an interpersonal level and between different parts of the population, or the different 'tribes'. More love and friendship is needed and not just at special times. Even though we educate to this principle, the subject of interpersonal relations has not yet been internalized, it doesn't really exist."

Gideon Sa'ar was an MK from 2003 to 2014 and served as Interior Minister and Education Minister.