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Coalition Boss Warns Netanyahu Against Settlement Evacuation

Yariv Levin, chairman of the governing coalition, has warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the political price he would pay for striking a historic peace agreement with the Palestinians.
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Knesset member Yariv Levin, chairman of the governing coalition, knows for sure how he is going to act if he discovers that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promoting a diplomatic arrangement that includes the evacuation of settlements. He is going to give up his role right away and without remorse — a role that, anyway, has never been his heart's desire — and focus his efforts on torpedoing the agreement. “The prime minister knows that I am loyal first and foremost to the way I believe in,” Levin says in an interview with Al-Monitor. “If, God forbid, a move such as the disengagement [from Gaza in August 2005] is re-enacted, I will not stay in office.”

The Knesset winter session is to open in about three weeks [Oct. 15], and what Levin says aptly illustrates the highly explosive situation Netanyahu is liable to face in the Likud party, if and when it becomes clear that he is headed for a historic diplomatic arrangement with the Palestinians. The prime minister is trapped in a far-right faction, and he will need a lot of courage and mental strength to make a decision that would inevitably lead to the loss of his support in the ideological right.

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