Netanyahu asks to delay settlements bill vote so he can coordinate with US

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly tells coalition party leaders that he wants to delay the final Knesset vote on the contentious Regulation Bill.

Netanyahu tells the party leaders he wants to coordinate steps with the new US administration before bringing the dramatic bill to the Knesset floor.

The bill, slammed by large parts of the Israeli left and center-right, as well as Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, would legalize several thousand homes in Israeli settlements in the West Bank built illegally on privately owned Palestinian property, offering financial compensation to the landowners and staving off any further demolitions such as the one carried out against the illegal Amona outpost last week.

Netanyahu’s comments to the coalition leaders come just hours after he tells his own Likud ministers that the bill would come up for its second and third readings, the final votes before becoming law, on Monday as scheduled.