PM confidant Tzachi Hanegbi says disagreements on Iran nuclear deal, settlement construction will be less pronounced under next president
A close confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that there was significantly more agreement between the Israeli leader and US president-elect Donald Trump than with President Barack Obama on issues of key importance to the Jewish state.
Tzachi Hanegbi, a Likud MK and minister-without-portfolio, said that the Iran nuclear deal and construction over the Green Line — the two most contentious topics between the Obama administration and Netanyahu — will no longer be a source of tension between Israel and the United States under a Trump presidency.
“On both of these issues, our view was much different than Obama’s, while it is likely much more similar to that of Trump,” Hanegbi told Army Radio.
Hanegbi also said that Trump does not share the Obama administration’s view that settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is an “obstacle to achieving a deal between us and the Palestinians.”
Since the nuclear deal with Iran was signed in 2015, Netanyahu has been its fiercest critic amongst world leaders, saying shortly after it was signed that the agreement was “terrible” and that it would have been “preferable to have no deal than this deal.”
Netanyahu said that Iran will be able to continue on its path towards a nuclear weapon despite the deal because “the inspections regime is full of holes.” He has repeatedly emphasized that sanctions were the incentive that brought Iran to the negotiation table and holds the view that the lifting of sanctions as a reward for Iranian compliance has in no way tempered its desire for nuclear capability.
The issue of settlements was also a source of much tension and acrimony between Netanyahu and the Obama administration. Obama has described continued settlement expansion as a “deeply troubling trend,” while US Vice President Joe Biden has said that “the Israeli government’s steady process of expanding settlements and expropriating land is eroding the possibility of a two-state solution. ”
Although Obama was able to convince Netanyahu to agree to a partial settlement freeze during peace talks with the Palestinians in 2009 and 2010, settlement construction and expansion has since continued. The number of homes built during Obama’s presidency, however, remains below the total number built during the George W. Bush years, according to an AP report based on figures obtained from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics.
As reported by The Times of Israel