“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concluded his bid to be reelected as Likud chairman with the usual round of telephone calls to key party activists. On Tuesday, he is expected to be elected to the post for the fifth time since 1993.

For almost 20 years, he has been in the political arena, campaigning and fighting, rising and falling, collapsing and taking off again in an endless cycle. Politics are in his blood, government is in his soul.

In the rest of the Western world, prime ministers and party leaders who are unwilling to vacate their posts – who never say “enough” – are almost unheard of. But Netanyahu is on track to become the Likud’s version of Shimon Peres, the perennial Labor Party leader recently elected president.”

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