Prime Minister Netanyahu has reportedly asked coalition members to delay a final Knesset vote on the controversial Settlement Bill.
Netanyahu told party members that he wants to coordinate steps with the Trump administration before the bill reaches the floor of the Knesset plenum.
The measure would legalize about 100 Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It would also prevent nine homes from being demolished in the town of Ofra.
Houses and towns that are built on areas that are allegedly privately owned by residents of the Palestinian Authority would not be destroyed. Instead, the land owners would receive 125 percent of the value of the lot in financial compensation, or a comparable tract of land in exchange.
As it stands now, the Bayit Yehudi party is still vowing to move the bill ahead for a vote in the Knesset on Monday.
Following Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s statement late last week that he could defend the Settlement (Regulation) Law, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told Channel 2’s “Meet the Press” that the government has another solution in mind. Shaked is a senior member of Bayit Yehudi.
“The country will take a private lawyer and the legal adviser of the Knesset, [Eyal Yanon,] will help him defend it [in the Supreme Court, which may say the law contravenes international law,]” she said.
“Half a million residents of Judea, Samaria and the Jordan Valley deserve normal lives just like residents of Kfar Sava and Tel Aviv,” declared a statement from the party on Sunday night. “Fifty years late, the Regulation [Settlement] Bill will come up [for a vote] tomorrow and pass in the Knesset in order to give them this normalcy.
“We are certain that all members of the coalition will lend their support to make that happen,” the statement added.
Earlier in the day, when the prime minister was asked by reporters about pressure over the measure as he boarded a plane for the UK, he said he is “always hearing fake ultimatums. Such ultimatums,” he said, “don’t excite me.”