Negotiations said put on ice after Netanyahu, Greenblatt fail to agree on formula; comes days after Israel announces self-imposed restrictions
Talks between Israel and the US on curbing settlement building have reportedly been suspended after negotiations failed to yield an agreement.
Israel Radio reported Sunday the negotiations have been put on hold after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jason Greenblatt — US President Donald Trump’s special envoy — and working groups on both sides failed to reach understandings on the issue.
There was no immediate confirmation of the report, which comes days after the Israeli government announced self-imposed settlement restrictions.
On Thursday, Netanyahu told members of the security cabinet that Israel would curtail construction in West Bank settlements as a goodwill gesture to Trump.
The Prime Minister’s Office said overnight Thursday-Friday any future construction would be limited to existing settlement boundaries or adjacent to them.
However, if legal, security or topographical limitations do not allow adherence to those guidelines, new homes will be built outside the current settlement boundaries but as close as possible to them.
Israel will also prevent the construction of any new illegal outposts, Netanyahu told his ministers.
The White House on Friday welcomed the new policy.
“The Israeli government has made clear that going forward, its intent is to adopt a policy regarding settlement activity that takes the President’s concerns into consideration,” a White House spokesman told The Times of Israel. “The United States welcomes this.”
The announcement by Israel came just hours after the security cabinet had decided to establish a new settlement for families evicted from the razed Amona outpost — the first new settlement in some 25 years. The restrictions do not apply to that community.
Amona, north of Ramallah, was evacuated by court-order earlier this year because it was built on privately-owned Palestinian land.
Its replacement, which Netanyahu promised to the evacuees, will be the first new Jewish town in the territory since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The UK, France, Germany, Jordan, the United Nations and the Palestinians immediately slammed the move as an obstacle to peace.
On Thursday, the Prime Minister’s Office also announced the approval of tenders for some 2,000 new settlement homes — housing units whose planned construction was first announced in January.
Trump had asked Netanyahu at a joint press conference last month for Israel to “hold back” on West Bank settlement construction. Several efforts since then to formulate a coordinated Israeli-US position on settlements have not yielded an agreement.
While Israel stopped establishing new settlements in the early 1990s, outposts set up since then have been given retroactive approval, and existing settlements have expanded their footprints, sometimes being neighborhoods of existing settlements in name only.
As reported by The Times of Israel