The head of the Binyamin Region Residents Council, Itzik Shadmi, warned on Sunday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s conduct when it comes to the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria, could cost him his position as head of the nationalist camp.
Shadmi spoke to Arutz Sheva several hours after 50 families from the Binyamin region community of Migron were expelled from their homes following a Supreme Court order that the community must be demolished.
“The entire settlement issue now depends on what the government will do next,” he said. “The government appointed the Levy Committee and should now regulate all the issues found in the cases of Migron, the Ulpana neighborhood, Givat Assaf and others. The Prime Minister was not courageous enough to bring the Levy Committee’s conclusions for discussion. Such a decision would have solved all the problems.”
Shadmi added that the ways in which the Migron and the Ulpana cases ended were stopgap measures. Migron residents were promised a new neighborhood in Givat HaYekev and the residents of the Ulpana neighborhood were promised 300 new homes in Beit El. However, said Shadmi, the issue requires a comprehensive and all-embracing policy.
He called on Netanyahu to adopt the conclusions of the Levy Report so that two new communities can be built to replace Migron without opposition, warning that if Netanyahu does not do so, “Peace Now will not let go. They will go after neighborhoods and small towns, and even if the large towns are not hurt, the little ones will be hurt even if the Prime Minister occasionally distributes candy to calm both sides down.”
“The Prime Minister has all the tools to reach a comprehensive solution to the problem, but he does not use them for his own reasons, and I'm afraid it is because of a lack of courage,” added Shadmi. “I do not think the Americans have anything to do with it, because they don’t care whether there’s another Migron or not and they have understood that the settlement project will not be destroyed. He fears the left, which sees all the destruction as a small victory.”
Shadmi concluded by warning that if Netanyahu goes on this way, he will not be able to continue to be the right’s candidate for prime minister.
“We will draw conclusions,” he said. “If he does not adopt the Levy Report, he'll finish his career as far as the right is concerned.”