Israel doesn’t plan to advance any more plans for West Bank settler homes this year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden when the two men spoke on Monday evening.
He also clarified that Israel won’t be authorizing any more outposts this year.
Right-wing politicians immediately accused Netanyahu of “freezing” settlement activity.
“A nationalist government doesn’t freeze settlements in the land of Israel. Period,” said National Mission Minster Orit Struck (Religious Zionist Party) tweeted.
No freezing of settlements
The Prime Minister’s Office immediately clarified that “there isn’t and there won’t be any building freeze in the settlements.
National Security Adviser Tzahi Hanegbi echoed that statement, underscoring that Netanyahu “did not commit to freezing construction in Judea and Samaria in any way.”
He explained that “since the beginning of the year, 14,500 housing units” had been advanced by the Civil Administration’s Higher Planning Council “in two meetings, the last of which was just a few weeks ago.”
“As part of the transparency practiced between the Israeli government and the American administration on the subject of settlements - the prime minister made it clear to President Biden that in the coming months, there is no expected meeting of the Higher Planning Council or a decision on the regulation of outposts.”
When Netanyahu was formerly in office he had created a system by which the Higher Planning Council met four times a year, a practice that was abandoned by former prime minster Naftali Bennett.
Right-wing politicians and settler leaders had expected that this practice would be resumed, but a source explained that the focus should be on the number of homes that were advanced and not the number of times the Higher Planning Council has met.
The left-wing group Peace Now has calculated that the Higher Planning Council in February and June of this year had advanced plans for 12,855 settler homes of which only 3,500 received final approval. It noted that this was the largest number of settler homes that have been advanced since it began tracking the issue in 2012.
The Biden administration has been sharply critical of the accelerated settlement activity that has occurred under Netanyahu, including policy changes that have fast-tracked the approval process.
The White House said that Biden told Netanyahu during their call that “he expressed concern about continued settlement growth and called on all parties to refrain from further unilateral measure.”
Biden spoke with Netanyahu just one day before he met with President Isaac Herzog, in which it was expected he would discuss the importance of preserving the option for a two-state resolution to the conflict.