Jewish Home moves ahead with new settlement, despite Netanyahu freeze

Jewish Home ministers are pushing for the establishment of a new West Bank settlement in place of the demolished illegal Amona outpost in the northern West Bank.

The move, first reported by Channel 10, comes in defiance of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s order not to establishment any new settlements until the Israeli government reaches an understanding over Israel’s West Bank policy with the Trump administration.

Netanyahu vowed to Amona’s evacuees, the 40 or so families who lived at the site before it was demolished in February, that a new settlement would be established by March 31. The move would mark the first official new settlement established by Israel in the West Bank in years.

But after US President Donald Trump asked Netanyahu to hold off on settlement building as the new administration in Washington found its footing, Netanyahu delayed the implementation of his promise indefinitely.

Now, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, who oversees the government’s settlement-building efforts through the nongovernmental Settlement Division, is ordering that NIS 70 million be handed to the Interior Ministry within seven days, to be made available to the Binyamin Regional Council for the purpose of founding a new settlement near where Amona once stood.

The move may be little more than a political gambit, since Netanyahu has the authority to simply cancel the order, but would face political fall-out from his rightist flank in Likud and Jewish Home if he does so.