Yesha Council Deputy Director Yigal Dilmoni on Sunday told Israel radio that the Netanyahu’s cabinet’s decision last Thursday means it is now OK to build thousands of housing units in Judea and Samaria, adding that the Council intends to take an active role in the new move. Dilmoni said that what President Trump has been signaling is that construction in Judea and Samaria is not “his biggest headache.”
Over the past two weeks, but especially in the days before this weekend, settlements leaders have decided to break with the prime minister’s timid interpretation of the White House stated and hinted policy. While Netanyahu and many local pundits have been pointing to a determination on the part of the US Administration to push a two-state peace deal, and that such a deal would necessarily involve at least a degree of construction curbing – at Yesha Council they refuse to accept this line.
Yossi Dagan, head of Samaria Regional Council, criticized Netanyahu’s approach to the White House, suggesting the PM is inviting American pressures where there hasn’t been any. “We are facing a historic window of opportunity,” Dagan told Makor Rishon on Friday, “yet, instead of taking advantage of it and start building without asking unnecessary questions, we approach the Americans to give us permission to build. This invites pressure.”
Dagan, whose power within Likud is significant, objects to Netanyahu’s distinction between building inside and outside the settlement blocks, threatening that a rightwing government that would miss the opportunity to build everywhere in Judea and Samaria “would lose the justification for its existence.” He is warning that “the political outcome of a freeze outside the settlement blocks will be the toppling of this government.”
Yesha Council Director Sheila Adler, who returned from Washington last Tuesday, is especially irate with the above distinction, stressing that the very idea of settlements that are within and without the legitimate borders of the Jewish homeland is an invitation for a Palestinian State.
“For us, the most important issue is construction outside the blocks,” Adler told Makor Rishon. “We will not give in on this under any circumstance. We also know for certain that this message was passed from the Prime Minister to the Americans.”
“Jason Greenblatt will have to come up with a formula that will enable Netanyahu to live in peace with his own Likud MKs,” Dilmoni said. Yesha Council representatives who have met with Likud ministers recently delivered a stern message: no construction freeze, full or partial.