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Ben-Gvir, Israel's powerful extreme-right leader

With his round glasses and white kippa placed crookedly atop his greying hair, 46-year-old Itamar Ben-Gvir presents an affable figure. But to his detractors, the lawyer turned lawmaker is a pyromaniac whose politics threaten to set the country ablaze
— Tel Aviv (AFP)

Once deemed a pariah in Israel's political arena, extreme-right leader Itamar Ben-Gvir may play a decisive role in the country's next government.

With his round glasses and white kippa placed crookedly atop his greying hair, 46-year-old Ben-Gvir presents an affable figure.

But to his detractors, the lawyer turned lawmaker is a pyromaniac whose politics threaten to set the country ablaze.

"I've changed," he told AFP from a palatial apartment in Tel Aviv in the run-up to Tuesday's poll. "When I said 20 years ago that I wanted to expel all the Arabs, I don't think that anymore. But I will not apologise."

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