Liberman urges PM to seek new settlement deal with Trump

Defense minister back-pedals on previous idea of building only within West Bank blocs, freezing other construction

Israel has not built enough in the West Bank settlements during the past eight years, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said Monday, adding that he was making the observation as a “pragmatic right-winger.”

Addressing a meeting of his Yisrael Beytenu party, Liberman attributed the limited construction to “a failure to formulate a policy” on settlement construction vis-a-vis the Obama administration.

Liberman, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, urged Israeli officials to wait patiently until Donald Trump enters the White House, and said Netanyahu must reach new agreements with the Republican president-elect on West Bank building.

But the defense minister also walked back comments he made Wednesday in which he indicated that he was willing to freeze construction outside of the main settlement blocs in exchange for increased building in the more populated areas.

Buildings under construction in the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba outside Hebron, July 6, 2016 (AFP PHOTO / HAZEM BADER)

Israel had to open a “new page” with Washington, he told the faction meeting.

Liberman said his comparison of the future policy to a 2004 letter sent by then-president George W. Bush to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, in which the United States acknowledged that the settlement blocs would remain under Israeli sovereignty in a future peace agreement, was merely “an example.”

Liberman also railed against the so-called Regulation Bill, which his party members supported in its preliminary reading last week. The bill allows for the retroactive legalization of illegal settlement outposts built on private Palestinian land.

The legislation does not help the settlement movement. Rather, “it harms the settlements,” Liberman said. “It’s simply unnecessary.”

Liberman also said that the bill was compromising the government’s ability to find another solution to the impending demolition of the Amona outpost.

“I am very much in favor of the residents of Amona, and that’s why I won’t lie to them,” he said, emphasizing that the regulation bill would not stop the razing of the outpost on December 25, as ordered by the High Court.