PM has not backtracked on pledge for new Amona settlement, says aide

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not backtracked on his commitment to establish a new settlement in the West Bank to compensate the evicted settlers from the illegal Amona outpost, a senior aide for the prime minister said Monday.

The statement rebuts recent reports claiming Netanyahu had frozen these plans after his meeting last week with US President Donald Trump.

“There is absolutely no intention to violate the commitment that was made to the settlers of Amona,” the senior aide said.

“Just today, his chief of staff Yoav Horowitz spoke with [Amona leader] Avichai Baron and told him that every effort is being made to find an agreed-upon solution, and that we do not renege on our commitment,” the aide added.

Channel 10 TV said that the question of where Israel can and cannot build in the territories is being discussed with the Trump administration, and quoted an unnamed source saying that the planned new settlement, and any other new settlement, would need White House approval.

The unnamed senior Israeli diplomatic source was also quoted saying that “not a lot has changed” where settlements are concerned between the previous Obama administration and the new Trump presidency. While Israel would likely not face Obama-style criticism for building over the pre-1967 lines inside Jerusalem, the source said, “whoever thinks Israel will be able to build new settlements, or build without limits outside the settlement blocs, is going to be mistaken.”

On Sunday, Netanyahu reportedly told members of the security cabinet that the government may have to renege on his pledge to set up the new West Bank settlement, following a request by Trump last week to “hold back” on settlement construction.

Netanyahu is said to have told ministers that, while he will not impose a settlement freeze, there is likely to be a slowdown in West Bank construction, according to reports on Channel 2 and by the Haaretz daily.

Trump told Netanyahu during a joint press conference in Washington last week to “hold back on settlements for a little bit,” a request that, according to the prime minister, makes it difficult to push ahead with the plan to establish the new settlement, Channel 2 and Haaretz reported Netanyahu as saying.

Amona is important, and a solution should be found, but there are more pressing issues, he is reported to have told his ministers, citing the need to work with the Trump administration to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“With all due respect to Amona, we must now focus on coordinating with Trump on Iran. It’s a top priority. I don’t care how many tweets people here write,” he said according to Haaretz, which cited two officials with knowledge of the content of the meeting. Netanyahu was likely referring to a number of tweets since last week by members of the pro-settler Jewish Home party.

On Monday, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads the Jewish Home party, said at a meeting of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Israel that he still believes Netanyahu will agree to establish a new West Bank community for the evacuated Amona settlers.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu clearly promised the Amona residents that he would form a new town for them,” Bennett said. “Moreover, he signed an agreement with them. I am confident that he will meet his words and we will stand beside him while doing that.”

Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, also of the Jewish Home, said on Sunday he had not been party to any discussions on Amona, but believed the issue may have been brought up at the security cabinet or the Likud ministers’ forum.

“The minister had no say whatsoever in the decision,” a spokesman for Ariel told The Times of Israel, saying that Ariel made his views on the issue clear in a tweet posted early Sunday afternoon.

“Promises need to be kept and I cannot see how the coalition can continue to work properly without fulfilling its obligation to the residents of Amona and to the citizens of Israel to establish a new settlement for them,” Ariel wrote.

A spokesperson for the Amona evictees said Sunday they had not been updated by the government. “As we have said before, we expect the deal to be fulfilled. We are hearing rumors from the media but no one has told us anything,” he said.

Under an agreement signed with the government ahead of the evacuation, Amona residents were allowed to pick a new site to rebuild their community — a first state-sanctioned new settlement to be built in decades.

Last week, the residents of Amona voted to move to the Geulat Tzion unauthorized outpost, located in the Shiloh settlement bloc. While Amona was built on privately owned Palestinian land, Geulat Tzion lies on a state-owned tract.

According to the deal, the new settlement is to be set up within two months.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.