Jewish Home MK denies Likud request to delay Ma’ale Adumim annexation bill

In a bid to avoid friction with the new Trump White House, the ruling Likud party has asked Jewish Home lawmakers to delay for three months any steps to advance a bill that would annex the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to Israel — a request that was initially denied but may still be granted.

The request, from the government’s top parliamentary negotiator, Coalition Chair MK David Bitan (Likud), to Jewish Home’s faction chair MK Bezalel Smotrich, came shortly after a five-hour meeting in Jerusalem between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump’s envoy on Israeli-Palestinian peace.

According to Channel 10, officials in Netanyahu’s office have been trying to convince the authors of the bill, Smotrich and Likud’s MK Yoav Kisch, not to bring it to the Ministerial Committee for Legislation meeting scheduled for Tuesday, in order to avoid forcing ministers to choose between potentially alienating a friendly new administration in Washington — during the high-profile visit of a key Trump envoy — or alienating part of the right-wing base.

Smotrich declined Bitan’s request for a delay, though the final decision rests with Jewish Home’s leader, Education Minister Naftali Bennett who has touted the bill as a coalition-backed initiative.

“There is no justification for hiding from our friend across the sea the widespread public and political support for applying Israeli sovereignty to Ma’ale Adumim as a first step,” Smotrich said in a statement.

“The law remains on the agenda,” he said.

Trump’s ascension in the US has led to expectations in parts of the Israeli far-right that the limits imposed on settlement construction in the West Bank during the Obama years would be lifted by the government.

Though the Trump administration has signaled that it would be much more tolerant on the settlement issue, Trump himself told Netanyahu during a joint press conference last month to “hold back” on settlement construction and expansion.

The two leaders have been trying to cement an agreement on Israeli government policy in the West Bank.

In their meeting Monday, Netanyahu and Greenblatt said they discussed the issue “in the hope of working out an approach that is consistent with the goal of advancing peace and security,” read a statement by the Prime Minister’s Office.

The Jewish Home party has long supported legislation that would see Israel effectively annex large parts of the West Bank, starting with Ma’ale Adumim.

Home to some 40,000 settlers in the Judean Desert east of Jerusalem, Ma’ale Adumim is widely considered in Israel to be included in any land swap deals that could be part of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. However, critics argue that extending Israeli sovereignty to the large settlement, and a parcel of land known as E-1 between the capital and Ma’ale Adumim, would effectively separate the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.

Israel has controlled the West Bank since capturing it in the 1967 Six Day War but has never moved to annex any of the territory beyond extending sovereignty to East Jerusalem. It later applied Israeli law to the Golan Heights, captured from Syria.