Minister: Slow settlement building puts coalition at risk

Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel appeared to issue a veiled threat that the coalition would be at risk if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t approve expanded settlement construction across the West Bank, Army Radio reported on Monday.

Ariel, a member of the right-wing national religious Jewish Home party, made the comments during a ceremony to mark the opening of a new synagogue in the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar.

“I say to the prime minister, I say to him and ask of him: don’t bring us to disgrace, and do not undermine this government and coalition because of a construction freeze. Start building,” Ariel said during the Sunday night ceremony.

Although there is ongoing construction in large settlement blocs that Israel believes will remain inside Israel in any final status agreement with the Palestinians, Ariel is reportedly irritated because he believes the government has led a quiet slowdown of construction in isolated Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

“The lack of construction can be understood, God forbid, as a prize for terror, I’m telling you, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu. Enough explanations, enough excuses; the time has come to end the construction freeze and to build in Itamar and in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, the same as the rest of the land of Israel.”

With 12 Knesset seats, the Jewish Home party is critical in providing the government its majority of 68 MKs out of a total of 120 in the Israeli parliament. If it withdraws from the coalition, it could cost Netanyahu his majority and lead to the toppling of his government.